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NEW REYELATION 

TO MANKIND, 

DRAWN FROM AXIOMS, 

OR 

Self-evident truths in nature, 

MATHEMATICALLY DEMONSTRATED 



"God never communicated a falsehood to any man, on any subject, 
human or divine.' 



BY 

JAMES ARLINGTON BENNETT. M.D.. L.L,D. 

AVTIIOn OF SEVERAL SCIENTIFIC WORKS. 



Price One Dollar. 



NEW- YORK: 

PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR. 
1855. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1555, by 

JAMES ARLINGTON BKNNKT, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District 

of New York. 



Orders for this Book, or for Bennet's Book-Keeping, to be ■ 
ed t0 J ARLINGTON BENNET, 

N, Y City Post Office. 



INDEX TO THE PROPOSITIONS 



PAGE. 

1. Does God exist as a living intelligence 1 13 

2. Were the elements of matter created 7. 14 

3. Is matter essential to God *? 15 

4. Was infinite space created, and is it essential to the 

being of God'? 16 

5. Does God specially govern and dictate universal 

nature 7 17 

6. Can any thing material or immaterial in existence 

be annihilated 1 18 

7. Are the ultimate elements of matter of the nature of 

space 1 18 

8. Are all things possible to God 1 20 

9. Does darkness or cold as positive qualities exist ? . . 20 

10. What is life and the cause of it 1 21 

11. What is motion and the cause of it 1 23 

12. What is power and the cause of it ? 24 

13. What is knowledge and the cause of it 1 25 

14. Is man's will free 3 25 

15. What is the ultimate element of man's body 1 46 

16. Is the soul of man, as a living intelligence, immortal 1 49 



IV. INDEX TO PROPOSITIONS. 

17. Do original or innate ideas exist or inhere in the soul 

of man 1 62 

18. Does natural or moral evil, as positive qualities, 

exist % 63 

19. Does such a place as hell exist ? 68 

20. Does God require man's worship and prayers 1 70 

21. Is man born with an innate moral sense of right and 

wrong % , 73 

22. Is man responsible to God for his actions 7 75 

23. Is man the only reasoning animal on earth 1 78 

24. Was a special revelation necessary, separate and 

apart from the laws of nature to guide mankind 
in their duty to God and their fellow-man 1 85 



PREFACE. 



The author has not written one line of this little 
work from any bias or prejudice lurking in his mind, 
but from the strongest conviction of the truth of every 
part and of the whole. He was born, baptized, and 
confirmed in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and if 
there be any prejudice of education left, which he 
thinks there is not, it is on the side of Christianity as 
a special revelation from God to man. But feeling 
himself fully responsible to God for his actions, his 
conscience will not permit him to say any thing con- 
trary to his best judgment, after so long and close an 
examination of the subject. Until he was 45 years 
of age, he Was wholly unable to emancipate himself 
from the force of his early education, but could not 
remain longer in mental bondage, and concluded that 
if the whole world should run after shadows, he would 
from Nature's Revelations, deduced from observa- 
tion and experience, endeavor to obtain the substance. 

He feels that he has refuted Doctor Chalmers in 
his great Treatise on Christianity, as to the credibility 
of his witnesses, the writers of the New Testament, 
and therefore invites and bids defiance to all clerical 
critics. ^ HE Author. 



Copy of a letter from the Hon. Henry Clay an the 
subject of the author's new work on " Political 
Economy, designed for the use of Schools :" 

Ashland, 14th Nov., 1851. 
Dear Sir — I return your manuscript on Political 
Economy, which I have read with great interest, but 
take the liberty to suggest, that you amend the arti- 
cle on Banking, by a greater degree of liberality, as 
banks are extremely convenient as well as necessary 
to commerce. Your work, as a whole, however, is 
excellent, and its principles, if acted on, must prove 
of great national benefit. As regards the modes of 
discussions, I deem it a new organization of the 
science and well adapted to the genius of our institu- 
tions. It will make an excellent school book. 
With great respect, 

I am your obed't servant, 
H. CLAY. 
Dr. J. A. Bennet. 



Note. — The author intends to publish the work to which 
this refers. 



INTRODUCTION. 



ARGUMENT ON THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY BEFORE THE 
SUPREME JUDGE, BETWEEN DR. CHALMERS AND DR. 
BENNETT. 

Doctor Chalmers having read to the Court his great 
Bndgewater Treatise, for which he had a solid reward, 
Doctor Bennett rose, and in an extremely meek and 
impressive tone, bowing to the Bench with great 
reverence, said, May it please this Supreme Court of 
Heaven and Earth. 

The prisoner at the Bar — The human race having 
been indicted by men, for the very solemn crime of 
violating the Law of God, as attempted to be proved 
by my opponent-— the arguments that have been made 
by him, although extremely ingenious, do not estab- 
lish the truth of that indictment. 

His great historical research and logical powers 
have enabled him to show in glowing terms some evi- 
dences of the truth of his case, as it appears on the 
surface, but his whole argument, as to the credibility 
of his witnesses, appears to me like a newly picked 
flower which blooms for a time, but soon fades away, 
for want of the nutriment which the root, from which 
it was taken, had supplied. 

I, therefore, assure this most Honorable Court that 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

I deem the prisoner at the Bar, mankind, to be not 
quite innocent of the charge brought against him, but 
not as guilty as the indictment expresses, at least so 
far as my learned opponent is able to establish his 
guilt. 

I shall first lay before this Court and my learned 
opponent, certain theorems, or established truths in 
natural history, which are admitted by all men — and 
then shall demonstrate the following twenty-four Pro- 
positions, from Axioms, Theorems, and Corolleries, 
on logical principles, after the manner of Euclid's 
Elements of Geometry, admitting no authority but 
nature, as presented to mankind. I shall use in these 
demonstrations, as proof, nothing from hearsay, no- 
thing from the writings of any man that ever lived or 
wrote since the human race was placed on this globe, 
nor any thing from mere belief, faith or hope, without 
the most certain testimony. I may, however, allude 
in the sequel to the opinions and practices of men in 
ancient and modern times, with their motives and 
actions, and their influence on society, but not in the 
demonstrations of my twenty-four Propositions, which 
I claim as a kind of " hoven organum" in the " First 
Philosophy." 



THEOREMS. 

RECEIVED BY MEN AS ESTABLISHED TRUTHS. 



1. All things on the earth are subject to the laws 
of gravitation, cohesion and motion. 

2. Every effect has a cause, and every cause, but 
the final one, is an effect to its proximate cause. 

3. All animals living on the land are supplied with 
members, organs, and functions suited to air and 
earth. 

4. All animals living in the waters are supplied 
with members, organs and functions suited to the 
waters. 

5. Animals suited to the earth and air cannot live 
in the waters. 

6. Animals suited to the waters cannot live on the 
land or in the air. 

7. Plants and vegetables that grow and live on 
the land cannot grow and live in the water. 

8. Plants and vegetables that grow and live in the 
waters cannot grow and live on the land. 

9. All animals of the same kind are governed by 



10 THEOREMS. 

. the special laws of their nature, from which they never 
depart. 

10. All plants of the same kind are governed by 
the special laws of their nature, from which they 
never depart. 

11. No animal can live on land, in water, or air, 
without a certain degree of heat suited to its nature. 

12. No animal or vegetable life could exist on this 
earth in a natural state without the permanent heat 
of the sun. 

13. When man, by his reason, can discover a de- 
sign in any thing, he is compelled to admit that there 
is a designer. 

14. There is a manifest design in the suitableness 
of land, air and water to the animals and vegetables 
which live on or in them. 

Corollary : There is therefore a designer. 



AXIOMS 



1. Man exists, of which existence he is conscious 
from external and internal impressions. 

2. To be, or exist at all, implies life of some kind, 
in contra-distinction to nonenity. 

3. Where there is life, there is motion. 

4. Where there are life and motion, there ispower. 

5. Where there are life, motion and power, there are 
intelligence and will. 

6. Man possesses life, motion, power, intelligence 
and will. 

7. Man did not produce himself. 

8. From nothing, nothing can arise. 

9. Nature is something. 

10. Nothing can be given where nothing is pos- 
sessed. 

11. The elements of all things which exist partake 
of the nature of the source from which they spring. 

12. What ever thing inheres in another is essential 
to it. 



12 AXIOMS. 

13. Man being finite cannot comprehend infinity. 
14 God is infinite. 

15. Space is infinite. 

16. Nothing can change its form, remain in or go 
out of apparent existence, independently of the first 
cause which brought it into existence. 

17. God is absolute. His will is law. 

18. God and his attributes which inhere in him are 
self- existent. 

19. The Creator must possess more power than the 
thing created. 

20. Nothing is independent of God. 

21. Motion implies life of some kind. 

22. A thing must exist before it can move. 

23. Nothing in existence can move unless it be put 
in motion by the proximate or remote cause of its ex- 
istence. 

24. A thing cannot move where it is not. 

25. God never did nor ever will reveal or communi- 
cate a falsehood to any man, in relation to any matter 
human or divine. 

Scolium, — He left man in such a state as enables 
him, from observation and experiment, to find out the 
secrets of nature, and God's will as far as necessary. 



grpments him % jjnjpme $i&ge. 

Proposition I. 
Does God exist as a living Intelligence ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

Axiom 1. — Man exists, of which existence he is 
conscious from external and internal sensations, or 
impressions. 

Scholium. — Man's consciousness has never been 
denied, nor do self-evident truths admit of demonstra- 
tion. 

Axiom 2. — To be, or exist at all, implies life of 
some kind, in contradistinction to nonentity. 

Axiom 3. — Where there is life there is motion. 

Axiom 4. — Where there are life and motion there 
is power. 

Axiom 5. — Where there are life, motion and power, 
there are intelligence and will. 

Axiom 6. — Man possesses life, motion, power, in- 
telligence and will. 

Axiom 7. — Man did not make himself. 

Corollary. — There must then have been a cause 



14 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

antecedent to man, from which man sprung. This 
cause men call Nature. 

Axiom 8. — From nothing, nothing can arise. Ex 
nihilo, nihel fit." 

Axiom 9. — Nature is something. 

Axiom 10. — Nothing can be given where nothing 
is possessed. 

Corollary. — Nature, therefore, must possess at 
least, life, motion, power, intelligence and will ; all of 
which we find in man. Nature, consequently, is but 
another name for God, from whom man sprung. 
God, then, exists as a living intelligence. 

This proves a mind anterior to our race, 

From which man sprung and gave him here his place. 

There is therefore no special revelation necessary 
to show to mankind that God exists as a " living 
intelligence." 

And so of all the following propositions, according 
to their nature. This proposition is admitted even by 
the savage race as the Great Spirit. 

Here then is a logical proof of the existence of God 
as a living intelligence, without the aid of any super- 
natural revelation, or written authority on Earth. 

Proposition II. 
Does matter exist, and were its elements created ? 

demonstration. 
Scholium. — It is shown in the first proposition that 
man exists, as an identity. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 15 

Theorem. — Man is matter in his present form, 
therefore, matter exists. 

Scholium. — Bishop Berkeley denied the existence 
of matter, founded on an ingenious sophism, drawn 
from Locke's doctrine of ideas, but man's conscious- 
ness, which has never been denied, proves the Bishop's 
doctrine to be false. 

Axiom 11. — The elements of all things that exist 
partake of the nature of the source from which they 
sprung. 

Corollary. — The things themselves, therefore, must 
necessarily partake of the nature of their elements. 
All things sprung from God and exist in him ; there- 
fore, all things in the universe partake of his nature. 
The elements of matter, consequently, existed with 
God from all eternity, which were brought into form 
by his will and power. 

Scholium. — The ultimate elements of matter ori- 
ginating in God are to man's mind as immaterial and 
incomprehensible as space or God himself. 

Conclusion. — The ultimate elements of matter, 
therefore, were not created, and being co-eternal with, 
and inhering in God, are an attribute of his Being. 

Proposition III. 
Is matter essential to God ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

Axiom 12.— Whatever thing inheres in another is 
essential to it. 



16 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Corollary. — It is proved in the last proposition 
that the elements of matter were not created, having 
existed in or with God from all eternity ; matter ', 
then, whether elementary, or in its present state, is 
not only an attribute of, but inhering in him, is essen- 
tial to his being. 

Scholium, — Whether matter as we now see it, or in 
its elementary state, existed with God from all eter- 
nity, or not, it must from Axiom 1 1 , partake of his 
nature, having sprung from him, and is consequently 
essential to his being. 

See Axioms 8 and 10. 

The import of the word inhere is thus shown : 
Water is composed of two gases, viz., Oxygen and 
Hydrogen. These gases inhere, and consequently 
neither of them will make water without the other. 

Experiment. — Take a gill of water and subject 
it to the poles of Voltaic Electricity, and you will de- 
compose it into two glass vessels, the one containing 
the oxigen and the other the hydrogen gas, both in- 
visible to man ; then mix them in one large glass ves- 
sel, and pass through them an electrical spark, and 
your gill of water will trickle down the sides of your 
glass vessel ; take it up and measure it. It therefore 
can be said that oxygen and hydrogen gas inhere, and 
are essential to each other to make water. 

Proposition IV. 
Was infinite space created, and is it essential to the 
being of God ? 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 17 

DEMONSTRATION. 

Axiom 13. — Man being finite cannot comprehend 
infinity. 

Axiom 14. — G-od is infinite. 

Axiom 15. — Space is infinite. 

Corollary. — God and space being equally infinite, 
must inhere, being of equal eternity. Space, then, 
being an attribute of G-od, was not created, yet is 
essential to his being, 

Scolium. — As space, matter, and life, are essential 
to man, so they are essential to G-od from whom man 
sprung, and of whose nature man partakes. 

Proposition V. 
Are the ultimate elements of matter the same as 
space ? 

Theorem. — God and his attributes, which exist with 
and inhere in him, are self-existent, space being a 
unit and matter being divisible, ad infinitum, their 
ultimate elements are therefore the same; Space to 
man being the negation as things now exist. 

Scholium. — Immateriality is but an idea, which 
does not exist but in our minds ; it is but the absence 
of materiality, the same as darkness is the absence of 
light, or silence the absence of sound. Matter by 
division becomes immaterial as regards our apprecia- 
tion as much so as space, but not as regards its exist- 
ence. The universe, in space, is material ) inspired by 
the life, spirit, and wisdom of God* 



18 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Proposition VI. 
Does God specially govern and direct Universal 
Nature ? 

' DEMONSTRATION. 

Axiom 16. — Nothing can change its form, remain 
in, or go out of apparent existence, independently of 
the first cause which brought it into form or existence. 

Theorem. — God being absolute, his will is law. 

Corollary. — The laws of God cannot be resisted, 
therefore, the will of God cannot be resisted. 

Axiom 17. — Rest through infinite space, implies 
no?ientity r , as regards matter. Inertia is but an idea. 

Corollary. — God is life and action, and mediately, 
or immediately, proximately, or remotely, directs and 
governs all worlds throughout infinite space, and all 
beings therein. 

Scolium. — With God there is no past or future. 
The whole universe and all matters transpiring there- 
in, is but one act of God. One eternal now ! There- 
fore God specially governs. 

Proposition VII. 
Can any thing material or immaterial in existence 
be annihilated? 

demonstration. 
Theorem. — It has been shown in the preceding 
proposition, that the ultimate elements of matter and 
space were not created, they being inherent in God. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 19 

Corollary, — It follows, of course, that God will not 
annihilate anything that is essential to his being, 
whether it be material or immaterial, in man's view ; 
therefore nothing can be lost or annihilated. The 
ultimate elements of all consumable things is heat, or 
c'oloric. 

Scholium. — Things may change in form to man's 
senses, but the element remains the same. This is 
seen also in the animal and vegetable kingdoms in re- 
production. 

Theorem. — The elements of all things inhere in 
Grod, therefore, nothing can die the death of annihila- 
tion while God lives. Note. — All animal and vege- 
table bodies have their ultimate elements in heat, or 
caloric. 

ILLUSTRATION AS TO THE DIVISIBILITY OF MATTER, 

Scholium. — It is found by computation that the 
matter, as far as known, in the solar system, including 
the sun with all the planets and comets, bears to a 
globe of space, having the sun for its centre, and ex- 
tending out half way to the nearest fixed star, (Sirius) 
the small ratio of but one to six hundred of millions 
of millions of millions of cubic miles. Thus expressed 
in figures : 

3 2 1 

As 1 is to 600,000,000,000,000,000,000. 

To afford some remote idea of the distance of the 
fixed star, Sirius, from the sun, astronomers say that 
if the earth should go off on a tangent and travel at 



20 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

its present rate of about 60,000 miles per hour, in a 
direct line, it would not reach the star Sirius, in less 
time than 14,500 years ! 

Now, if the unit of matter in the solar system, re- 
ferred to, were to lose its cohesion, or centripetal force, 
and be distributed equally throughout the above-named 
globe of space, it is clear that its elements would be 
so fine as not to be appreciable by the human mind, 
and could not be distinguished from space itself. Yet 
this would not be annihilation. 

This will of course apply to infinite space and 
worlds. 

Proposition VHL 
Are all things possible to God ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

Axiom 18. — The creator must have more power 
than the thing created. 

Corollary. — God cannot, therefore, make any thing, 
or being, equal in power to himself. 

Theorem. — Nothing is independent of God. 

Therefore the elements of matter or space, being his 
attributes, and inherent in him, he cannot destroy 
without affecting his being, but he can change their # 
forms as visible facts in creation show. 

Proposition IX. 
Does darkness or cold exist as positive qualities ? 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 21 

DEMONSTRATION. 

Theorems. — Matter exists. Light and heat, which 
are matter, exist. 

Scholium. — Darkness and cold are merely the ab- 
sence of light and heat, they are therefore mere sen- 
section, or negations. They are merely changes dis- 
covered by our senses. When we touch a body 
colder than ourselves, we feel a privation of heat, 
which gives the sensation, through our nerves, of what 
we call cold. When light ceases to enter the eye and 
affect the optic nerve, its absence gives the sensation 
we call darkness. 

Darkness and cold, then, are mere changes in our 
sensations, and do not exist in fact. We are con- 
scious only of the changes, but not of the existence of 
cold or darkness. 

Proposition X. 
What is life and the cause of it ? 

DEMONSTRATION, 

Axiom 19. — Motion, intelligence, and will, always 
imply life. 

Theorems. — There are three kinds of life: 1st. 
Mineral life, as perceived in gravitation or cohesion, 
and motion, for these properties are actions. 

Axiom 20.— Motion implies life of some kind. 

Scholium. — If a man holds me fast, and will not let 
me go from him, I cannot deny that he is acting. 
When the earth holds me on her surface, neither can 



22 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

I deny that she is acting. So of cohesion which keeps 
bodies together in small masses, or lumps. These 
actions, then, prove that there is a certain kind of life 
in minerals. See Axiom 2. The earth, too, as a 
whole " moves." 

Theorem. — Secondly. Vegetable life also shows 
action and motion, as in the growth and vegetation of 
plants, These two kinds of life, as far as we know, 
are void of intelligence and will. 

Theorem. — Thirdly. Animal life, connected with a 
nervous system of greater or less perfection, which 
shows itself by voluntary motions, as we call them, 
under the influence of a will. See Axiom 6. This 
is the most perfect of any. 

Scholium. — The immediate cause of animal life is 
organization, the functions in which are stimulated by 
the oxygen, or vital principle derived from the atmos- 
phere, or water. This is proved by the fact that if 
we deprive the animal of that vital air he will die. 
[Note. — Air is composed of oxygen and azotic gas, 
water of oxygen and hydrogen gases. Theorem. — The 
azotic and hydrogen gases are but diluents of the 
vital air, oxygen.] Without it, no animal can live 
one hour, and some, as man, not five minutes. The 
food of animals only supply the constant waste in the 
action of the animal body, for no part of the body is 
ever at rest from its conception in the womb until it 
dies. Nor even then, for it is converted into gases 
after death, until the whole again is reduced to its 
elements. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 23 

With regard to the perceiving principle in animals, 
I must leave that matter to other propositions, in 
which, intelligence, will, and 'immortality will be dis- 
cussed. 

Life may be compared to the burning of a candle 
supported by oxygen, which also supports flame, and 
which keeps in full action until it is all consumed; 
leaving nothing but heat. But God is the pure ulti- 
mate fountain of life throughout all worlds. 

God's spirit pure that shines in me and you, 
As shines a sun beam in a drop of dew ! 

TO GOD. 

" Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround, 

Upheld by thee } by thee inspired with breath, 
Thou the beginning with the end hath bound, 

And beautifully mingled life and death ! 
As sparks mount upward from the fiery blaze, 

So suns are born, so worlds spring forth from thee, 
And as the spangles in the sunny rays 

Shine round the silver snow, the pageantry 
Of heaven's bright army glitters in thy praise!" 

Proposition XI. 
What is motion and the cause of it ? 

demonstration. 

Axiom 21. — A thing must exist before it can move. 
(See Axiom 1). 

Axiom 22. — Nothing can move unless it be put in 



24 HELL DEMOLISHED. 

motion by the proximate or remote cause of its exist- 
ence. 

Theorem. — Motion is the action of a body changing 
its place from one point of space to another, or, it is 
the constant tendency to an} T one point, as in cohesion, 
attraction or gravitation. 

Axiom 23. — A thing cannot move where it is not. 

Theorem. — There is nothing in nature quiescent. 

Corollary. — The whole creation, visible and invisi- 
ble, being but one act of God, without regard to past 
or future, in that act he moves all worlds and all 
things. What man calls cohesion, gravitation, or 
electricity, are but God's agents as regards motion. 

Scholium. — Man's ideas of past, present, and fu- 
ture, grow out of the point he occupies in time, and 
have no relation whatever to past or future with Grod. 

Every globe in infinite space is in motion. The 
stars or suns in their centres and the world that re- 
volve round them. 

The ancients undertook to prove that there was no 
such thing as motion by the following 

SOPHISM. 

Does a thing move where it is ? The answer is no. 
Then does a thing move where it is not? The answer is 
again no. Then if a thing neither moves where it is, 
or is not, there can be no such thing as motion. 

Proposition XII. 
What is power and the cause of it ? 




AND HEAVEN GAINED, 25 

DEMONSTRATION. 

Theorem.— Power cannot be exerted without a 
will. 

Corollary. — If power could be exerted without a 
will, it would be independent of God, which is impos- 
sible. 

Definition.— -Power , then, is the bringing into being 
or form, and putting in motion anything material or 
immaterial It is the cause of expansion, contraction, 
cohesion, gravitation, and all motion, 

Theorem. — The will of God exerted is the same as 
the power of God exerted, but the modus operandi of 
God's volition we know no more of than we do of 
God himself. 

Scholium. — That man^s brain is an Electric battery 
subject to bis will, there can be but little doubt. 
Man's whole system is kept in being by stimulants. 
The oxygen, received in respiration, gives him heat, and 
stimulates his heart and brain, and electricity from his 
brain stimulates his muscular system through his ner- 
vous system, and causes motion under the direction of 
his will or soul, or the will of God acting in him. 

Proposition XIII. 
What is knowledge, or the cause of it? 

demonstration. 
Axiom 24. — Man is a sentient being. 
Scholium. — The philosophy of the human mind 



26 HELL DEMOLISHED 

having its foundation in this proposition, I must cobh 
eider very briefly, indeed, a mere outline. 

1. The general anatomy of man. 

2. The nature of the perceiving principle, 

3. Memory. 

4. The understanding. 

5. The judgment, and 

6. The reasoning faculty. 

THE ANATOMY OF MAN. 

The foundation of man's person consists of about 
248 bones, large and small, which give support to the 
soft parts, and which are each covered with a mem- 
brane called the periostium, to which the muscles that 
move the body and its members are attached in pairSr 
The system of the bones is called osteology. 

To enable the muscles, which are susceptible of con- 
traction and relaxation, to put the bones in motion, we 
find a set of long white fine chords proceeding from the 
brain and spinal marrow, to the muscles in all parts 
of the body,, and terminating in extremely fine fibres 
all over the surface. To these anatomists have given 
the name of nerves, or the nervous system, which are 
the servants of the ruling power, the ivill. 

These nerves, with the brain, constitute the sentient 
being, whose perceptive and ruling power is seated in 
the sensorium commune, where they meet in the brain. 
In this nervous system, as a whole, resides the animal 
being, for the other animal functions only tend to 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 27 

keep the nervous system and brain in a healthy con- 
dition. 

The circulation of the blood from the heart through 
the arteries, and back again to the heart through the 
veins and lungs, is called the sanguiferous system. And 
which gives not only nutriment but stimulus to the 
whole man, by imbibing 21b. 8oz. of oxygen in 600 
cubic feet of air in 24 hours, and which oxygen gives 
the blood the red color> and by its stimulus keeps up 
the action, or pulsation of the heart, the animal heat 
being kept up to its standard 98° Farenheit, by this 
respiration. 

The digestive or nutritive system commences in the 
mouth and stomach, from being acted on by a liquor 
called gastric juice , it passes into the intestines along 
with bile from the liver, and is there prepared in the 
shape of kile or milk, for it is white, to be taken up 
by a set of capilliary vessels with mouths, called the 
lacteals, and carried into the thorasic duct and sub- 
clavian vein to the heart, where it mixes with the 
blood, but does not get its red color until it passes 
through the lungs, where it is vitalized by the oxygen 
of the air. 

The brain and nerves if detached from the other 
parts of the body, would present a most wonderful 
animal. 

In this nervous system the five senses are placed. 

1. Sight. 2. Hearing. 3. Smell. 4. Taste. 5. 
Touch, or Feeling. 

We may compare these five senses to five windows, 



28 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

placed round a house, in which a man stands, and 
through which he may discern what is going on with- 
out as well as within ; for if there were no person or 
perceiving principle within, the windows would be of 
no use whatever. 



That this perceiving principle does not arise from 
any special organization is clear from the fact, that it 
is possessed by animals of all classes, from the 
slightest organizations, up to man ; but still it may 
be said that it may arise from any organization, and 
that the perceiving power may be in proportion to 
the perfection of the organization. To the latter I 
object. Because an organized being is matter, and it 
is to be shown that matter, per se, can perceive or 
think. 

It may be again said that as the thinking principle 
tires by exertion, it must be material, and somewhat 
of the nature of a muscle, and that, therefore, not only 
perception but thought are the result of organization. 

To this I again answer, that it is not the thought, 
but the function, or organ, acted on by the thought, 
that tires and requires relaxation. Every muscle in 
the body may be extremely tired, while the mind re* 
mains in the highest vigor and activity. 

It seems, then, that this perceiving, thinlcing, will- 
ing principle, is something superadded to the organi- 
zation, and has its seat in the brain, where all the 



AND HEAVEN GAINED, 29 

nerves of the body come together, and by which means 
it perceives what is going on in the external world. 
The body was designed for its use, and not it for the 
use of the body. The mind was designed for the gov- 
ernment of the body, and not the body for the govern- 
ment of the mind. Yet their connection is as mys- 
terious as the connection of God with the universe, 
and are, perhaps, designed for the use of each other. 

That man's mind thinks in connection with matter, 
is a fixed fact, and as man sprung from God and par- 
takes of his nature, it is perfectly logical to say that 
God also thinks in connection with matter. The soul 
may think in connection with the elements of matter. 

In consequence of the powerful action which gal- 
vanic electricity has on the muscles through the nerves, 
it has been suggested by the chemists, that the brain 
is a galvanic battery, the electricity from which is 
used by the will to put the muscles in action. Even 
were it so, it is no more than the use made by the 
will , or soul, of the thighs, legs, and feet, to carry the 
body over the ground. The mind uses various means 
to accomplish its objects. When a dead man, whose 
organization remains perfect, can be brought to life 
by galvanic electricity, we shall admit that it can 
compel the soul to return to the body, if it be not the 
soul or essence of life itself. 

We are quite sure that we both think and feci, 
So what we sprung from must be thinking still. 

But suppose it could be established that the percep- 
tive power, and the whole mind and soul of man are 



30 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

material^ and that God himself is material, it would 
not destroy the wisdom and power of the Supreme 
Being, nor abstract a particle from his goodness, glory, 
or duration. It might clash with the current dogmas 
of theology. That would be all. It has already been 
shown that materiality and immateriality are of 
equal eternity. That infinite space and matter are 
attributes of God, inhering in him, and of equal eter- 
nity with him. 

There is the strongest proof that mind thinks in 
connection with organized matter, as in man, but there 
is no proof whatever that mind thinks unconnected 
with matter. The human mind may admit, but not 
conceive such a thing. If the external world did not 
possess a spirit and matter, it is doubtful whether 
man's mind could comprehend them at all. 

But it may be asked, how comes it that the moment 
in which the most perfectly organized animal loses its 
blood, through the oxygen of which the whole system, 
including the brain and nerves, are stimulated, it 
ceases to perceive or think ? Or which is the same 
thing, when the vital air is denied access to the blood 
through the lungs ? 

Now although the nervous system in man may re- 
main perfect, with all his nutritive functions, in perfect 
order, yet without the stimulous, or presence of the 
vital air, he ceases to be a sentient being, and his body 
will, almost immediately, run to putrefaction and de- 
composition. 






AND HEAVEN GAINED. 31 

There is then no more perception, no more memory, 
no more judgment, no more reason, or will ! 

The oxygen, then, is the actual proximate cause of 
life in every animal, and when that has left, life has 
left, with all the intellectuality of man. But remem- 
ber that animal life is not the perceiving principle in 
man. 

This is one of the strongest arguments imaginable 
that the thinking principle of man is the soul, and that 
God has fixed a certain point in the, animal economy 
at which the soul will remain no longer in its tenement, 
whether it be immortal or not. 

But, if the soul die with the body, then, the only 
immortality which men and other animals have to ex- 
pect will be in their issue, their posterity, so long as 
that posterity may remain in connection with this 
globe. Well, even this is a great favor from the ever 
living, wise Father of all. All things which have had 
a beginning will .result in their ultimate elements. 

But all my arguments are founded on the soul and 
body of man being emanations from God, and as re- 
gards their ultimate elements are of an equal eternity 
with him. 

OF THE FIVE SENSES, OR THE INLETS OF KNOWLEDGE. 

The elements of man's knowledge are not acquired 
by any voluntary acts of his own, for while his senses 
are exposed to the external worlcl, he is obliged to see, 
hear, smell, taste, and feel, and this too before he can 



32 HELL DEMOLISED^ 

reason on the nature of any of those things presented 
to his observation. 

1. The Sight. Were this the only sense now pos- 
sessed, he could never know that anything he sees 
really has an existence, as the external world would be 
a mere picture presented to his vision,, from which the 
optic nerve receives nothing but reflected light, which 
is discerned and remembered by the perceiving prin- 
ciple within. From this sense alone man could have 
no knowledge of distance or proof of the existence of 
an external world. He would remember a beautiful 
picture, but that would be all. This is called an 
idea. 

2. Hearing. By this sense alone, the intonations 
which disturb the atmosphere, would be perceived, by 
which we would suspect that there were something in 
existence besides ourselves^but would have no certainty. 
Assisted by sight we would have a little more cer- 
tainty of an external icorld, as in the case of a thunder 
shower, &e. Here then is another idea of which the 
perceiving principle takes cognizance. 

3. Smell. By adding smell we only discover the 
difference or existence of odours in the air, which give 
another idea. 

4. Taste. The sense of taste is of a similar nature 
with smell. It discovers to us the flavor of things 
improper or necessary to us for the support of the 
body. 

5. Feeling, or Touch. This sense, which is the 
mother of the other four senses, gives us together with 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 83 

them a certainty of an external world as well as of our 
own identity. 

Man is a sentient being, whose knowledge of the 
external world begins in his mother's womb, from the 
sense of touch or pressure to which he is confined, 
until he comes into the world. Yet it is possible that 
he may taste the lequor amni in the womb and hear 
loud sounds before he is born. 

It is very clear that all we know of the external 
world is derived through the medium of these five 
senses, for there does not appear to be any intuitive 
knowledge of the external world, or even of ourselves, 
without them, no more than there is in a tree. 

The perceiving principle is seated in the brain, at 
the extreme point of the nervous system, or what is 
called the sensorium commune, or the centre of sensa- 
tion, from which position it discovers from a multi- 
tude of nerves, all bodies that impress or touch them 
internally or externally. This perceiving principle is 
the soul of man, or of all animals, if they have souls 
to claim that kind of immortality that man claims. 



SIGHT. 

When I look out and view the sky, 

What pleasure fills my heart ; 
I think my bliss can never die, 
Nor reason see, why I should sigh, 
Or from this world depart. 



34 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

HEARING. 

You should not boast — your vision bright 

Will into darkness turn ; 
Your brightest day must end in night, 
While sounds I'll hear with much delight 

When thou art in thy urn. 

SMELL. 

I'd sooner have the glorious breeze, 

With odor filFd from toast, 
Or from good beef, or good old cheese, 
Or honey from the comb of bees, 
Than sights or sounds — ye boast. 

TASTE. 

When smell and hearing pass with grief, 

And sight is very dim, 
I'll still enjoy my roasted beef, 
And good old wine, to give relief, 

Or gratify my whim. 

FEELING. 

Children dear, I'm glad to see 

Each happy in his place, 
As you must all depend on me, 
And in me truly happy be ; 

As God may give us grace. 

OF MEMORY. 

This is an original faculty of the soul which must 
remain with it when it leaves this gross body, other- 
wise the soul as an identity could not be immortal, on 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 35 

Christian principles, or live after the dissolution of 
the body ; and on the principle of justice could neither 
be rewarded for matters done or left undone in the 
body, of which it has no knowledge. If this be not 
so, the soul dies with the body and returns to the ele- 
ment from which it sprung, to be absorbed in Deity. 
This, I think, was one of the doctrines of the stoics. 

The soul, at all events, while connected with the 
body, must be a living spirit, to be able to discern 
the external world, for it retains nothing but the 
figures and colors of things presented to it as shadows, 
which in fact are spiritual representations to a spirit. 
So that whether the soul or perceiving principle dis- 
covers an external object by the sight, hearing, smell, 
taste, or touch, still it retains nothing but an idea, 
from the sensation, which is immaterial or spiritual, as 
it has absolutely no substance, no more than empty 
space. 

On this ground Bishop Berkeley argued that there 
is no external world. But the Bishop forgot his sen- 
sations,- for had he knocked his head against the corner 
of an iron stove, he would have been convinced to the 
contrary. When the Bishop gave his farm to Yale 
College, in Connecticut, did he believe it to be a real- 
ity or not ? 

Corollary. — It follows, then, that the soul, or per- 
ceiving principle, while connected with the body, must 
be a spirit, which perceives, thinks, and remembers 
things that are spiritually shown to it, through the 
medium of the senses, but it cannot be shown that this 



36 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

memory remains after the dissolution of the body. 
This is a mere matter of hope. 

The perceiving, thinking, willing principle, or soul, 
must partake of the nature of Deity, as proved by 
Axiom 1 1, or it would not be able to perceive or dis- 
cover the utility, fitness, or beauty of the works of 
the great and good Father of all. 

THE UNDERSTANDING. 

This is the same faculty of the mind as comprehen- 
sion, which is original in the soul. We first perceive, 
then remember, next comprehend, or understand what 
is perceived, which is treasured up in the memory 
from which we form a judgment, either from intuition, 
conscience, or knowledge previously acquired. 

THE JUDGMENT. 

Judgment is an original faculty of the soul. In 
this faculty the comparing lies, as to magnitude, 
quantity, quality, truth, falsehood, &c. And from a 
series of such judgments arises what we call 

REASONING. 

The subject of Reasoning embraces the art of logic, 
which would make a book of itself. 

1. I perceive the sun and moon. 2. I remember 
their forms and some of their qualities. 3. I judge 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 37 

by comparing their effects that they are not of the 
same nature. And from this single judgment I may 
go on to reason thus. The sun and moon give light, 
but I feel no heat from the moon, yet I do from the 
gun. Therefore I conclude that the sun is fire or a 
heated body, but that the moon is not. This is rea- 
soning from my sensations, which are the only evi- 
dence I have of the facts. 

11 What can man reason but from what he knows V 9 

This line from Pope is what any man can see or say. 
2. By my consciousness I find myself here, I feel 
quite certain that I did not make myself. I discover 
that I perceive, think, and remember, I therefore con- 
clude that a cause anterior to my existence, must 
have sent me here. And from these data I go on to 
reason about that cause. 

REASONING- BY ANALOGY. 

Our moon gives its reflected light to benefit intelli- 
gent beings on this earth, whose sense of sight can per- 
ceive and appreciate light. The planet Jupiter has 
four moons revolving round him. I therefore con- 
clude, by analogy, that Jupiter must be inhabited by 
intelligent beings (there is nothing formed in vain,) 
to receive the benefit of the light of those moons. See 
the demonstration of Proposition 1st. 

Mathematical reasoning is the most certain, yet 
even here it must be founded on self-evident truths 



38 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

or theorems to have any just weight with rational 
beings. 

Moral reasoning is founded mostly on our assumed 
notions of what the will of God is, drawn either from 
God's revelation to all men, through nature, or from 
what is assumed as special revelation, to some particu- 
lar individual of the species, or from both. 

There is no certainty, whatever, in the conclusion 
drawn from any premises, not founded on self-evident 
facts or theorems, that no man can refute. 

Reasoning founded on faith or belief in what other 
men may have written or said where the object is to 
govern mail's actions or form his conscience, can have 
no just conclusion, unless the things themselves are 
first established as facts. 

The Jewish writings state, that the sun and moon 
stood still at the prayer of Joshua, for the space of a 
whole day, that the soldiers of that warrior might have 
light to slay their neighbors ! Now this story is be- 
lieved by many well-meaning men, on the ground that 
every thing in the Old Testament must be true ; 
which ground my learned opponent has not attempted 
to prove even in regard to the New Testament. 

It is an easy matter, to show, from our present 
knowledge of astronomy, that such a circumstance 
never happened. That the laws of nature and gravi- 
tation were never suspended to gratify any mortal. 
(See Theorem 1st). The writer of that Jewish legend 
believed the earth to be fixed. That the sun, moon 
and stars revolved round it in 24 hours, according to 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 39 

the notions of Ptolomy, that the diurnal motion of the 
earth stopped for 24 hours, the ocean would have 
rushed over the land and settled Joshua's affairs in 
quick order. But the impudence of such a story is 
only equalled by its absurdity. Just think of calling 
on the Almighty to suspend the laws of motion to ena- 
ble one*' set of grass-hoppers to kill another set of 
grass-hoppers ! " But to crowds belief." Yet the old 
women in breeches will reply — " O ! it ivas a miracle." 
To man all creation is a miracle. But where is 
the evidence that G-od has ever altered his established 
laws of cohesion, gravitation, or motion, for the pray- 
ing, cursing, or swearing of all the Christian, Anti- 
Christian, or Jewish generals, or other men, on earth ? 
What God does in his single act, in his eternal now, 
is from his own good will and pleasure, for his own 
wise purposes, wholly irrespective of man. 

REASONING BY SYLOG-ISM. 

All murderers are wicked men. 

Nero, the Roman emperor, was a murderer. 

Therefore, Nero was a wicked man. 

In this syllogism it is assumed from history that 
Nero was a murderer, which may not have been the 
fact, but still the conclusion is logical on the assumed 
premises. 

The following is a sophism in logic. 

If, when you tell the truth, you say you lie, you lie. 

But you say you lie when you tell the truth. 



40 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Therefore, in telling the truth, you lie ! 

Intelligence, or knowledge, then, is the soul's 
acquaintance, through the nervous system, with all 
things in the visible creation, including matters of true 
history and science drawn therefrom by the reasoning 
faculty, and the laws of association. But reasoning 
by analogy, separate and apart from revelation, that 
because we live as sentient beings in this world, that 
therefore we will live so in a future world, is ex- 
tremely vague and inconclusive. By the same kind 
of reasoning from analogy, we may say that there are 
quite enough sentient beings to occupy all the worlds 
in infinite space, without sending earth's inhabitants 
across the mighty gulf, to reside on a strange soil, and 
in a climate, perhaps, not fitted to their use. The 
Christian faith is, that we shall rise from the dead, 
take our bodies, and live again on this or a new world. 

Proposition XIV. 
Is man's will free ? 

God's will is free to do every thing consistent with 

his nature and being. Man sprung from God and 

partakes of the nature of the source from which he 

sprung, (Axiom 11); therefore, man's will is free to 

do all things consistent with his nature and being. 

" Yet gave me in this dark estate 
To know the good from ill, 
And binding nature fast in fate. 
Left free the human will/'* 

* I give these lines only to show that other men have 
thought as I do, but not as authority. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 41 

That is, as free as man's ruling passion will permit, 
uninfluenced by special divine ruling power. God's 
law is not only that man's will be free as to muscular 
actions, the same as that of any other animal, but 
that man's corporeal system shall have but a short 
duration in its presjent form, and that man, like a cat, 
is just such a creature as to mind and body as God 
designed him to be. 

Man was not doomed to share eternal night, 
A little darkness, but a mighty light. 

Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found, 

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground. 

Another race the following spring supplies — 

They fall successive, and successive rise ; 

So generations in their course decay, 

So flourish these when those have passed away. 

Illustration from Pope's Homer. 

God does nothing without design — nothing at ran- 
dom — nothing by chance — lout has fixed a regular 
series of causes and effects, from himself to the small- 
est atom in infinite space. 

Scholium. — The law of pro-creation, with its ma- 
chinery, never would have existed, had God designed 
man's body should be immortal in this world. This 
globe would not hold one millionth part of the persons 
that have lived on it for the last 6000 years. Men 
were designed to change their form and state, what- 
ever new form they may hereafter take. He is in the 
hands of his Maker, who is ever acting, and must sub- 



42 

mit. But it is quite clear that " the fruit of the for- 
bidden tree" did not bring death into this world with 
all its woe, 

Theorems. — All inferior laws and inferior powers, 
must of necessity submit to the superior. The whole 
mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms, must submit 
to the laws of gravitation and motion. The moon is 
kept in its orbit by the superior power of the earth ; 
and all the primary and secondary planets and comets, 
by the superior attractive power of their respective 
suns in infinite space, and they again are governed by 
the mighty power and will of the Omnipotent Deity ! 

Deo Optimo Maximo ! 

If a man fall into the ocean, his body must be lost, 
if not rescued. If an earthquake sink a city beneath 
the level of the sea, all bodies heavier than water 
must go down. All the prayers of all the men that 
ever lived will not save them from their fate. Now, 
where is the freedom of man's will in these matters, 
more than that of a horse ? 

God knows no evil — all to him is good, 
And would to man if rightly understood. 

The decree of God has slain all who have died since 
the first man was made, about eighty-five thousand 
millions of men, women, and children ! Man counts 
death an evil, but it is no evil with God. It is as 
natural and agreeable to God's law for man to die as 
to be born. The fear of death has been given to man 
for the preservation of life. In these matters men 
have 'no freedom of will whatever. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 43 

Well then, how far is man's will free ? To say that 
it is just as free as God designed it to be, is no an- 
swer, but to say that it is free enough to enable him to 
obey those moral and physical laws inherent in man's 
nature, is an answer. Let us then first see what power 
man has over the organs, functions, and members of 
his body. 

1. His will has no power over the circulation of his 
blood. 2. Nor over the digestive organs. 3. Nor 
over the secretion of the bile. 4. Nor over the secre- 
tion. of the urine. 5. Nor over the secretion of milk. 
6. Nor over the secretion of semin. 7. Nor over res- 
piration only in a slight degree. 8. Nor over men- 
struation in woman. 9. Nor over hearing, unless he 
stops his ears. 10. Nor over smelling. 11. Nor over 
tasting. 12. Nor over sight, excepting in closing his 
eyes. 13. Nor over feeling. 14. Nor over the growth 
of his body. 15. Nor over the growth of his hair, or 
nails. 17. Nor over the healing of a wound. 18. Nor 
over sudden pleasure. 19. Nor over pain. So as to 
these, man is under the mediate or immediate govern- 
ment of the will of God. He therefore has not only 
no freedom, or will, or power in these matters, but in 
fact, being a mere machine, he is denied any will 
whatever as to the government of these functions. 

The freedom of his will then as regards man's phy- 
sical frame extends only to its influence on his muscu- 
lar system. He can move the muscles of his eyes, eye 
brows, nose, mouth and face generally at his will, of 
the diaphragm in breathing, of the thighs, legs and feet, 
in giving motion to the body, and of his arms, hands. 



44 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

and fingers in the performance of all kinds of laboi 
and all other matters to which their use may be ap- 
plied. Had man power over all his animal and vital 
functions, he would need no physician. 

A horse or an elephant, has just as much freedom 
of will over the muscular system possessed by each 
of them, as man has over his. If the elephant only 
possessed a vocal language and human hands, he 
would no doubt be as susceptible of mental culture as 
man himself. For he is a vastly more reasoning and 
reasonable creature than one half of mankind. 

Man's will has very little freedom in any matter 
which relates to the support of his person. When, in 
ordinary circumstances, he is extremely hungry or 
thirsty, he will rush at a piece of roast beef, or drink 
of water, without exercising any choice whatever. The 
same as any of the inferior animals. The imperious 
demands of his nature compel him to act. In fact, in 
this and such cases his will is not free. When he 
starves himself to death, or otherwise commits suicide, 
his will is governed by the motive that induced the act, 
and although the motive may appear to him reasona- 
ble, it is insanity. It is useless to say that the act of 
the will is the act of the whole soul, because the act 
of the soul is the act of the will urged on by a motive 
behind it. 

Now this is exactly in accordance with the nature 
of the freedom which man possesses for the soul, that 
acts without a rational motive in an idiot, or an insane 
person, and is not accountable to any law for his act. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 45 

Now let us enquire what is behind the motive which 
urges man's will or soul to action. 

He has a moral sense inherent in his nature, aided 
by his sympathetic nerves, or rather a susceptibility 
of forming a sense of justice and truth from the 
pleasure and pain derived through his nervous system. 
Those acts or things which give him pleasure he 
esteems good, and desirable ; those which give him 
pain he deems bad, or evil. These are merely names 
arising from his sensations. Yet, as he advances in 
knowledge, they form a standard in his mind of right 
and wrong* 

They produce in the solitary man, a desire for what 
gives him pleasure, and an aversion to what gives him 
pain. From pleasure and pain, arise hope and fear, 
joy and grief, love and hate, peace and anger, and in 
the social man in addition, malice, revenge, pride, 
emulation and ambition, 

From one or all of these contending passions in man's 
soul, the desire of obtaining some fancied good, or 
the avoiding of some fancied evil, or the gratification 
of some passion, whether right or not, is the foundation 
of the motive which acts on his will or soul, when 
he puts his mental or muscular system into action. It 
is a motive, sane or insane, behind a motive. Every 
crime against nature's laws is committed from false 
motives. 

How to govern and regulate these passions God has 
given him caution, judgment, and reason, with the 
sense of justice above alluded to ; whether innate or 



46 HELL DEMOLISHED^ 

acquired. But when the ruling passion arising from 
self-love is encouraged, or the passion of revenge, which 
is a false motive, man will act on them ; the influence 
of judgment and reason being set aside, man's will is 
not free when his reason is not able to govern his pas- 
sions, for whatever he himself may think of his mind 
he is at the moment insane. 

Here we have, then, just such a creature as God 
intended man to be. For he gave man sufficient sound 
reason to govern his passions. 

" Govern your passions with a firm endeavor, 
Weather impatience, then I'll call you clever. 5 ' 

Man's passions are to be brought into subjection to 
the law of nature, or when known to the special will 
of God by directing them from youth, up to their legi- 
timate ends, which are his own happiness, and that of all 
creatures living. Man's will then, is not in all cases 
free. Man is a machine moved by a living power. 

Proposition XV. 
What is the ultimate element of man's body ? 

demonstration. 

All animal matter is derived from the same element. 
A tallow candle which is made from the fat of an ox, 
is composed of carbon and hydrogen. The spermacetti 
candle, which is made from the sperm of a whale, is 
also carbon and hydrogen. All animal matter is com- 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 47 

posed of carbon and hydrogen. The gas which gives 
us the flame, light, and heat, is earburetted hydrogen, 
and if wholly consumed will result in nothing but heat 
or caloric. 

The element, then, from which all animal matter^ 
including man, is derived, is caloric, or heat. 

If the body of an ox, or a man, be subjected to 
destructive distillation, excluding the air, the re- 
sult will be earburetted hydrogen gas, and this gas, 
when brought into contact with oxygen gas, the sup- 
porter of flame, will, together with any residuum, be 
wholly consumed, the final result being caloric or heat 
Here are chemical facts. 

After one or two hundred years, or less, the human 
body, interred in the earth, will have wholly disap- 
peared in the shape of gases, which arise to the sur- 
face and mix with the air, and nothing will be left but 
a small quantity of lime, (carbonate of lime) which 
harden the bones ; and this lime is highly combustible, 
as is proven in the Calcine or Drummond Light. So 
that the element of all animal matter, as well as vege- 
table, is heat, or caloric. Caloric is opposed to gravi- 
tation and cohesion, and is unconfinable and impon- 
derable, yet when in the form of flesh it has weight. 

If you steep the thigh or arm bone in weak acid for 
24 hours, the lime will be removed, and the fleshy part, 
which retains the shape of the bone (the os femeres) 
may be lapped round your arm. 

Moses made quite a mistake when he said that men 
and animals were made out of the earth, or slime of 



48 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

the earth. He has made many other mistakes also, as 
facts in astronomy, geology, and chemistry prove. If 
God had told Moses anything concerning the creation 
of the worldj or of man 5 he would have told him the 
truth, (here my opponent nodded his logical head,) and 
man should give credence to the facts in nature, in 
preference to the legends of the Mosaic philosophy. 

Scholium.— -The philosophy of Aristotle maintained 
its ascendency in the Schools and Colleges from the time 
of Alexander the Great to the time of Lord Bacon, 
when the " Novem Qrganum" swept it out of existence. 
Is it, then, to be wondered, that the Philosophy of 
Moses, which pretends to bo inspired, should blind the 
multitude ? The Old Testament has, however, many 
truths and wise sayings. 

The writer distinctly remembers that in his own 
father's house, more than fifty years ago> it was said 
that no man had any right to think freely on the 
Bible. " That a free thinker was an infidel, and that 
an infidel was a devil /" No doubt that there affe a 
great many good, pious men, who think so now. God 
has denied no man the right to investigate his works, 
much less the writings of his fellow-man, no matter 
what may be the pretensions of their authors. I chal- 
lenge every man's criticism to this brief work, and am 
quite willing to be corrected when wrong. 

The velocity of light is about twelve millions of 
miles in a minute. There are fixed stars or suns, so 
remote from this earth in infinite space, that even at 
that rate their light has not yet reached us ! The 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 49 

matter in- all the globes in our solar system, congre- 
gating at the velocity of light, had it come from a 
globe of space, the semi-diameter of which should reach 
half-way from the sun to the nearest fixed star (Sirius), 
could not reach here in less time than eight months. 
Yet Moses tells us that all was made in six days, to 
give his seventh day divine authority, which in fact is 
nothing more than a wise and good civil institution, 
like any other wise and good civil institution among 
men, and should be obeyed by the people. 

God, who takes 9 months to bring a child to matu- 
rity, and 21 years to complete the growth of his per- 
son, and 40 years more to mature his intellect, would 
not be very likely to hurry the mighty work of infinite 
creation, or of this earth, through in six days of our 
time. 

Scholium.— Caloric, or heat, being unconfutable, fills 
infinite space, and inhering in God, and of an equal 
eternity with him, is most unquestionably an attribute 
essential to his being. 

The ultimate element of man's body, and all animal 
matter, is caloric, or heat. 

Proposition XVI. 
Is the soul of man, as a living intelligence, immortal ? 

duration, or eternity. 

Was there a belt that could contain 
In its vast orb the earth and main, 
With figures on it crowded o'er, 
Without a cipher in the soar j 



50 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

And could your laboring thoughts assigo 
The total of the crowded line : 
How scant the sum, the amount how vain 7 
To reach duration's endless chain I 
For when ten millions more are done, 
Unbounded age has just begun ! 
The element of mortal man, 
Although a mite, in God began ; 
From endless age that man can't name, 
In God, the element's the same, 
And must be so while ages roll, 
For of him comes the human soul ; 
And when it tires on earth to roam, 
It rests in God its ancient home. 

DEMONSTRATION. 

Tils is the most difficult question that was ever pre- 
sented to man. 

Moses never believed or taught it ; Zeno, the chief 
of the stoic sect, doubted it ; Socrates, and his pupil 
Plato, Pythagoras, and even Cicero, only hoped it. 

But Christianity, through its messengers or writers, 
announces it as a fact which we are called on to be- 
lieve. We are assured that " life and immortality are 
brought to light in the Gospel." 

However this may be, I will not take their author- 
ity without an investigation of the subject to see what 
can be proved by natural reason. 

Paying no regard to the mode which God took to 
make the first man and woman, or the first men and 
women, whether they were raised from the ovem and 
semin, in a jelly, in the torrid zone, and grew up to 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 51 

maturity as they now do from the womb, or were made 
full grown men and women, which is much more likely, 
with the powers of reproduction, it would be useless 
to inquire, as in either case man has been produced by 
a mind and power antecedent to his own. 

Inasmuch as God has given the power of reproduc- 
tion to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, it is a per- 
fectly just inference that men, animals, and plants, 
are immortal in their issue on this earth, as long as 
the earth and sun may remain, for as many as can get 
a living. 

The time will no doubt come when no increase in 
number can take place, }^et if the earth be eternal^ 
men in the fleshy (not all,) must be immortal in their 
issue. One generation may die, but the next will sup- 
ply its place. 

The plan of new beings springing out of the old 
ones, is wise and good, for it is the only mode it seems 
in which such immense numbers of beings could be 
permitted to enjoy the life which God has given on a 
world of limited capacity like this. If a man had no 
other identity after his change, the hope that he may 
have it in his posterity is no small consolation, and on 
this principle most men are anxious for the perpetuity 
and well-being of their issue. 

Sexual intercourse and reproduction, clearly prove 
that men and women were never designed to live be- 
yond a lifted time on this earth ; the story, there- 
fore, of original sin having " brought death into the 
world, with all its woe, 7 ' is but a chimera of the imagi- 



52 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

nation, or romance of Milton. If God had intended 
the first pair, or pairs, to be immortal in their persons 
on this earth, it is not at all likely that he would have 
made them of different sexes, with the organs of re- 
production. Man is, therefore, just such a creature 
as God designed him to be. 

But the immortality which Christians are looking 
after is the union of soul and body, at the " Resurrec- 
tion of the Dead." This leads me to consider man 
from his first conception in his mother's womb, to the 
time of his birth. 

RACES OF MEN. 

(The celebrated Doctor Parr, states, in regard to 
the Negro, that he forms " the link between man and 
the brute." This he undertakes to prove from the 
manner in which his head is attached to the spine, at 
the foramen ovalia, from the thickness of the Negro 
skull, and the small quantity of brain contained in it, 
in comparison to that in the white man and other 
races. From the manner in which his spine is attached 
to the pelvis, from the length of the os calcis or bone 
of the heel and mode of walking. The monkey, he 
states, is but one grade below the Negro — as seen in 
Africa). 

The above was written by the Doctor at a time when 
the British were in possession of slaves, but although 
the Negro differs from the vhite man and#ther races, 
yet he is not so low in the scale of being, as Doctor 
Parr would wish to make us believe. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 53 

That he is a variety of the human race there is no 
doubt, but whose inferiority to the white man as to his 
intellectual powers is quite as manifest. The rete 
mucosum, or black matter between the cutis and cutis 
vera, proves that the Negro is a distinct race, ab initio, 
from the beginning. The slavery of the mind is a 
much greater curse than the slavery of the body. 

To produce one sentient being, two souls and bodi 
are deemed necessary by the Maker of man. The 
germ of the new being is fixed in both sexes, for one 
sex cannot reproduce without the aid of the other. 

It is well known that the male semen is a fluid, but 
physiologists are not decided whether the female semen, 
is a fluid or an ovium, or egg. 

In all reproduction which takes place out of a 

womb, as in fowls, fish, &c, eggs appear to be the 

production of the female, but when a foetus is conceived 

• and matured within the body, fluid semen only would 

appear to be necessary, and eggs wholly unnecessary. 

What are called the ovarie and fallopean tubes in 
woman are extremely analagous to the testes and 
urethra in man, and there can be no doubt that the fe- 
male semen, in the act of coition, is passed through 
them into the womb, where it meets the male semen. 
Both then adhere to the fundus or other part of the 
uterus, which they inflame, and which brings on a flow 
of blood from the mother, forming the placenta from 
which the foetus, is suspended by the umbilicus, in a 
cist not bigger than a pea. 

There must be a flow of semen from both sexes 



54 HELL DEMOLISHED. 






which causes the pleasurable sensations in the act of 
coition, which sensations are given to induce to the 
act of coition for reproduction. 

Here then is the embryo of man's being, whose ulti- 
mate element is caloric, or heat, to which is annexed 
a perceiving, thinking principle, either generated with 
the body, or specially infused by God, in utro gesta- 
tion, at the time of " quickening" 

As the copulative act between the sexes is partly a 
voluntary embrace, in which mind and body are ex- 
erted to their greatest extent under the influences and 
powers vested in both sexes by God, and as the new 
being in the womb is made perfectly independent of its 
mother, excepting as to the nourishment derived from 
her blood, it is a certainty that the soul and body pro- 
ceed from and partake of the nature of its parents, 
who had the vital principle from God in them from 
their first parents. 

All nervous communication between the foetus and 
its mother is wholly cut off, there being no nerves in 
the umbilical cord through which the mother's blood 
flows to it, her respiration vivifying the blood for its 
nse, the new being therefore received in the act of coi- 
tion all the vital and other property which belong to 
its nature. No will of the mother or fright can 
affect the foetus in utro directly. If she miscarry, it is 
an effect produced on the womb by causing it to con- 
tract and expel both fcetus and placenta. 

Then we must admit that the power of procreation 
in multiplying new beings is inherent in our nature and 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 55 

is the will and law of God, for we cannot bring our- 
selves to conclude that God lias left his work so in- 
complete as to be obliged sjieciatty- to infuse a soul 
into every new being which the promiscuous inter- 
course of mankind should offer, many of which are de- 
stroyed an hour, a month, a year after conception, 
and of which thousands are idiots. 

If the soul then be immortal as an identity, its 
immortality must arise from the vital principle 
infused into the first parents of the human race. Can 
man think and will unconnected with matter ? 

God is the proximate or remote cause of all things, 
from whom all things sprung, and of course nothing 
can die while he lives, but that the bodies of hundreds 
of millions of beings which have evaporated from their 
graves are destined to arise and form a union with the 
intelligent souls which they once had, is not proved or 
attempted to be proved by my learned opponent on 
the credibility of his messengers. 

An insane woman threw herself into a glass fur- 
nance, in England, of immense heat. The attendant 
instantly looked in and saw a black spot, but on his 
turning round and looking in again, the fire was as 
bright as ever, not even her smoke was left. Will 
God perform the miracle of uniting her soul and body 
in accordance with the Christian hope ? Or will she 
be an exception ? Nothing was left of her but caloric, 
which cannot be destroyed. It is as infinite as God, 
and therefore must be one of his attributes. " The 
Almighty is a consuming fire.' 1 



56 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

From the first man and woman, or from as many 
different pairs as God made, there have sprang within 
six thousand ; :out eighty thousand rnilli:: 

human beings, who have lived and died in that time ! 
About cine hundred millions of human beings, the 
present population of the earth, die in every 33 years, 
and somewhat more are reproduced. About 75.000 
young and old die lay. 

Now, suppose we take the average population of 
this globe I 1000.000.000. for the next 5000 years, 
which is :ry century, then, three 

thousand millions will die. Should the earth last for 
five thonfi ara more. mber of souls that 

have lived and 
years. d millions of millions 

of mi 16,000.: Extend tbi 

one mi 

Thi will be juite sm imposing host of "good and 

:s out of carburet- 

ted hydrogen gas. or urate element caloric. 

There is nothing, then, to -:-- resurrection of 

the \ hope an in the doctrines of my 

tngers. Here the learned Doctor 

rd the affirmative. 

SPIRITUAL BODY. 

If the soul of man. which embraces perception, com- 

:. and wilL shall 
ever t tion of its 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 57 

present tenement, it will probably be to one composed 
of the elements of matter, and which must be material 
and sentient, for although to man's senses it would be 
invisible, it must still be in part material. 

Now, then, for a rational proof of the immortality 
of the soul, as no other proof short of special Revela- 
tion can be given. 

It has been already proved that the elements of mat- 
ter are essential to, and inhere in God, who has life, 
intelligence, will, and power. That the elements of all 
things that exist partake of the nature of the source 
from which they sprung. That man's whole body is 
composed of heat, or caloric, with a little lime, &c. 
That man sprung from God, and consequently par- 
takes of his nature ; his soul being co-eternal with God 
as an element. That God thinks in connection with 
matter as an attribute. That God is immortal. That man 
also thinks in connection with matter as an attribute, 
and partakes of the life of God, his element being fire. 
That God is a spirit, or intelligence, whose attributes 
are space and matter, the elements of matter being as 
incomprehensible to man's mind as space itself. 
Therefore man's thinking principle, if united as a spe- 
cial identity to the element of his body, fire, as in God, 
can never die while God lives. The soul of man ac- 
cording to this is immortal. And this is all the proof 
I am able to urge of its immortality. 

Here, then, is the spiritual body announced in the 
New Testament, and which, if admitted, must add 



58 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

strength to Christian faith, it being the only aid I ca.,. 
lend my learned opponent on this subject. 

So far as natural reason can reach the assumed 
Divinity of the Saviour, on the principle here laid 
down, everything is in favor of his having been spe- 
cially begotten of God, (which is no more a miracle 
than man's first creation,) for the express purpose of 
giving sanction to the laws of nature, or will of God, 
to which Christianity comes nearer, notwithstanding the 
imperfection of its messengers, than any other system 
ever promulgated in the world. What Christ has 
said and done, is no doubt true, but some things his 
disciples and others have said of him, according to my 
opponent's messengers, which we have strong reason to 
doubt. My erudite friend, Dr. Chalmers, will admit that 
Judaism, Stoicism, and Platonism, have been brought, 
into the Christian system, and the zeal of Christian 
writers has caused them to insert matters, which I 
need not here name, in the Greek Testament, that are 
not truths. 

But all this, with all the legends and errors of 
Moses and the Jewish writers, cannot upset nor invali- 
date the beautiful system of morals taught by Chris- 
tianity, " whether they have been specially revealed 
or discovered by man." 

I have said that God thinks in connection with mat- 
ter. Was not the person of Jesus Christ matter? 
Did not God think in connection with him, and live in 
him, if he be the divine being claimed ? I ask those 
who believe in the Divinity of the Saviour. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 59 

The truth, too, of "that great mystery, the Trinity, 
may also be shown thus : 

1. God, the Father, is the spirit, life, and soul. 

2. God, the Son, is matter, by which (of which) all 
things were made. 

3. God, the Holy Ghost, is the operation (or motion) 
proceeding from the spirit (life) and matter. The 
Father and Son. 

So that spirit, matter, and motion, being of equal 
eternity, they inhere, and are essential to each other. 
They are, therefore, but one God. The supreme 
mind, matter, and motion, cannot be separated, they 
have ever acted together as one. 

Now, whether this be the doctrine of Socrates, or 
Plato, or Zeno, or of Christianity, it is equally true. 

In addition, then, to natural reason, we have direct 
revelation, if my opponent's testimony be good, through 
the Saviour, that the soul of man is immortal, proved 
only, however, by the assumed credibility of the mes- 
sengers. But the proposition of the necessity of a 
special revelation is yet to be considered, by which I 
intend to show that there is no reliable, legitimate 
testimony whatever, in either the Old or New Testa- 
ments, which goes to prove any Special Revelation to 
any individual among men, of what God's will is, other 
than what is revealed through natural reason, to all 
philosophic minds, excepting the testimony of living 
witnesses, who truly believe in the Divinity of the 
Saviour, and who have received the Comforter, the 



60 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

paraclete, as a ratification of their faith. But even this 
will be accounted mere animal feeling. 

We know of no intelligence unconnected with 
materiality, even God himself. Christians must admit 
this, for they believe that Divinity and humanity 
were united in the Saviour. Socrates and Plato 
taught that God and the universe were united, which 
I think I have proved. We have the idea, also, in 
Pope, when he says, 

"Whose body nature is, and God the soul." 

Plato held to three great principles in the universe, 
viz. : Spirit, Matter, and Motion. The Christians 
have them in the Trinity. 

This does not invalidate the truth of any principle 
in Christianity, founded in the law of nature, which 
none will deny is the law of God. But my object is 
to prove all things by reason, by induction, and when 
it agrees with special revelation, it will confirm Chris- 
tians in their faith. But there is nothing, as a living 
intelligence from eternity to eternity, immortal, but 
God. 

None will presume to think that God has the shape 
of man, with members like his. All things are made 
to suit their respective places. This globe needs no 
legs to carry it round the sun. It does not require 
limbs to be able to think. Birds have wings ; fishes, 
fins ; whales, tails ; yet no doubt they all think, so 
that man's immortality will not depend on his shape 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 61 

in a future state, as God's wisdom does not depend on 
his shape, whatever that may be. But at all events the 
thinking principle of man, which is the soul, cannot 
die while God lives ; his soul is, therefore, as an iden- 
tity immortal, whether on this world or elsewhere. 
The elements of the soul existed with God from all 
eternity. 

SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS. 

I have already shown that space and matter were 
not created, but that they are attributes of, and inhere 
in God. That they are of equal eternity with him, 
and essential to his being. That God thinks in con- 
nection with them. That the elements of matter are 
quite as incomprehensible to man, as infinite space, or 
God himself. Those, therefore, who believe in the 
Divinity of Jesus Christ, in fact that he is God the 
Creator of all things ; that is, the power and intelli- 
gence that brought all things into form, from elements 
that existed with him from all eternity, must admit 
that when in the flesh he thought in connection with 
matter, for he is admitted to have been a Very man, as 
well as the Very God. But it has been shown that 
the element of man's body is caloric heat, or fire, 
which last is nothing more than concentrated caloric, 
and which fire is material. God, then, is just as 
likely to think in connection with the element as with 
the body itself. 

And, as the elements of man partake of the nature 



62 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

of the source from whence they sprung, Axiom 11, 
which is God, it is a fair inference that man's soul 
when separated from his present body, thinks, as an 
identity, with the elements which compose matter, for 
his nervous system is for no other purpose than that 
the soul, or perceiving principle, should, through it, 
acquire knowledge of the eternal icorld. 

On this view of the subject all our deceased friends 
are, no doubt, among us and around us, and are able 
to commune to our souls such matter as they may 
think proper, separate and apart from the trash that 
is usually announced by silly impostors, as Spiritual 
Manifestations. 

THE HEAT IN MAN'S BODY. 

The medium heat in the human body is 98° Faren- 
heit The head is counted by anatomists one-eighth 
of the whole person, so that if we multiply 98° by 
8=784° ; if therefore the heat in the remaining seven- 
eighths of the person were all in the head, it would 
consume it in less time than it takes me to write this 
paragraph. It would immediately go off in flame. 

As regards these matters I am prepared to see ig- 
norance look on them " With brute unconscious gaze." 

Proposition XVII. 
Do original or innate ideas exist or inhere in the 
soul of man ? 

DEMONSTRATION, 

All knowledge is acquired through the medium of 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 63 

the senses, yet the archetypes of all ideas received 
through them must have existed in God, and necessa- 
rily exist in man's soul, which sprung from God and 
partakes of his nature. 

Corollary. — Man's soul must, therefore, possess 
within it, in a latent state, the ideas of all things in 
the visible world, which are shown to the perceptive 
faculty or soul, as light brings out all things in the 
visible creation. Did not the ideas of all things that 
exist in the visible world preexist in man's soul, it is 
doubtful whether they could be perceived at all, for 
he perceives nothing but their representatives, or 
forms, colors, &c, but which appear as matters well 
known to him. 

Proposition XVIII. 
Do natural and moral evil exist as positive qualities ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

It is quite clear from the volume of Nature spread 
open before us, and from the history of animal and 
vegetable life, and of man in particular, that God's 
main design was the greatest degree of possible good, 
pleasure, and happiness to all. 

The idea of good and evil arises from pleasure and 
pain growing out of our nervous system. If a man 
breaks my leg I feel great pain, and call it evil, but it 
is equally an evil, in the same sense, if broken by acci- 
dent, for the pain will be just the same. Where there 
is no sensation, there can be no pleasure or pain, and 



64 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

consequently no idea of good or evil. Death to man 
appears to be a great evil, because our pleasure in life 
is much more than our pain, and our love of life 
makes us deem death a great evil. 

The same nervous system which gives us pain gives 
us pleasure, and as the pleasure is God's main design, 
the pain is but its opposite, the same as darkness is 
the opposite or absence of light, the light being the 
positive quality or main design. So of death, which 
is only the shadow of the main design, which is life. 
Were men immortal in their persons, they might know 
no pain. God has made nothing independent of him- 
self. He wisely keeps the power in his own hands. 
Death is, therefore, no evil, but the result of man's 
organization, and of course an absolute relief from the 
infirmities of age. To die is just as natural as to go 
to sleep, or to be born. 

There are opposites in all nature. Cold is a non- 
entity, the opposite of heat the positive quality. Yet, 
although a man may be frozen to death, cold is no 
evil. The temperature of our bodies is 98° Fahren- 
heit, yet it might have been that of fish, 40°. He can 
suit beings to an atmosphere of flame. The sun may 
be inhabited. Unless there be a very peculiar atmos- 
phere around the planet Uranus, which is more than 
3200 times farther from the sun than this earth, the 
cold there must be extremely great. Yet it is no 
doubt inhabited by sentient beings. A man's head is 
counted to be one-eighth part of his body. If the 
heat in the other seven-eighths were added to his 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 65 

nead, it would be 784°, which would destroy it in less 
time than it takes me to write this sentence. Caloric 
is an expander of all bodies, and is the opposite of 
gravitation and cohesion. 

Concentrated caloric would destroy not only men 
but a world. Yet caloric is no evil, but on the con- 
trary a positive good, for of it man is composed, and 
without it we could not exist. 

Destruction by fire, only reduces animal and vege- 
table bodies to the original element from which they 
sprung. 

The ultimate element of water itself is caloric. 
Water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, either of 
which, when separate, can be consumed, the result being 
caloric. 

Volcanoes, earthquakes, pestilence, which arises 
from certain states of the air, men call evils, but with 
God they are no evils, nor were they created as such. 
"What sweet is there in nature without a bitter ? 

All men may see that what God wills is right, 
A little darkness, but a mighty light i 

As regards moral evil, the arguments are exactly 
the same. The chief aim of the Almighty is mani- 
festly moral good. Behold the influence the spring 
of the year has on all creatures ! What joy, pleasure, 
hope, happiness ! Behold the excessive pleasure of 
infants, and the pleasure of all beings who obey the 
laws of nature, which are the will of Grod. 



66 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Who can pass along without seeing the beautiful 
adaptation of the earth, water, air, and heat, to the 
bengs who reside on it to enjoy them. 

When man disobeys the law of nature, pain of body 
or mind, or both, must follow. This he calls an evil. 
If a man kick me on the shin I feel the pain, and in- 
stantly conclude that if I kick him that he will feel a 
similar pain, our nervous systems being alike. My 
judgment comes in then, and tells me that I should do 
unto others as I would have others do unto me. 

Moral evil, then, bears the same relation to moral 
good, that the shadow does to the substance. 

There's moral good, but evil that we call 
Is but its shadow, here attending all ; 
God knows no evil, all to bim is good 
And would to man, if only understood. 

Everything in nature has its opposite. The sun 
cannot shine on both sides of this world at the same 
instant. Neither are all things possible, as for in- 
stance, this earth cannot be where it now is, and at 
the other side of 'the sun at the same moment. Motion 
is the act of a will possessing power and intelligence, 
but its opposite, Rest, was never created, and in fact 
is a mere negation. God is infinite, the universe is 
infinite, and in motion. 

Motion can never cease so long as the cause, God, 
exists. One of the axioms of natural philosophy is, 
that a body once put in motion, will move forever in a 
right line, if uot attracted by some other body. AH 



A.ND HEAVEN GAINED. 67 

things are directed by the Almighty will, and for the 
best. Neither natural or moral evil, therefore, were 
ever created as positive qualities. They are mere 
negatives, the opposite of natural and moral good, as 
above stated. They are the shadows attending the 
substance. 

But if one man kills another, is that a moral evil ? 
Yes, (to man, but not to God, for he slays all,) he did 
it in the absence of the moral good. God never made 
him for the purpose of killing his fellow-man, as this 
he reserved to himself. 

God slays all living mortals here on earth, 
He takes the lives of millions at their birth, 
He sweeps the earth of every living thing, 
From meanest wretch to him that rules as king. 

And in all this there is no evil. 

Who gave man authority to slay millions of ani- 
mals who never did him any harm, for the use of his 
body ? There is nothing in man's constitution or 
frame which shows that he was designed to live on 
animal food. His teeth and hands show to the con- 
trary. The teeth of all the omnivorous and herbiver- 
ous animals, show that they were not designed to live 
on animal food ; whereas, the teeth and claws of lions, 
tigers, cats, &c, the carnivorous animals, clearly show 
that they were designed to live on animal food. 

The nature of each race is fixed by (xod, from which 
it cannot depart. 

11 Pussy will be pussy still." 



68 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

J Tis just so with man ; you may by reason, moderate, 
control and direct to some extent, the powers of his 
mind, but his nature, without making him a fool, and 
controlling all his intellectual powers by superstition, 
cannot be changed ; nor even then, for if this should 
happen in one 'man, or one generation of men, or 100 
generations, the next man or generation of men, left 
to himself or themselves, will think for themselves, if 
the directors of the baneful influence shall have disap- 
peared. The children of pious men are nearly always 
wicked. 

Darkness is the absence of the light, 
A mere negation which we call the night ; 
Just so is evil a negation too — 
The opposite of good in me and you. 

Proposition XIX. 
Does such a place as hell exist ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

I have no wish to lessen the fears of men who are 
unwilling to subject their passions to the law of 
nature. Yet I feel bound to follow truth and reason 
notwithstanding my argument may clash with the com- 
monly received notions of the times. 

God is infinite. All things exist in God. There- 
fore, if hell exists it must exist in God : which is too 
absurd to be admitted by rational beings. 

God fills all space, and made all things ; if hell, 
therefore, exists, he must have made it. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 69 

It is an axiom that the elements of all things that 
exist, partake of the nature of the source from which 
they spring, so that if hell exist, it must have sprung 
from God, and therefore it partakes of his nature; 
which is so absurd that we must reject his Satanic 
Majesty's dominions altogether. Pluto was the god 
of hell. 

Hell and purgatory were invented by the heathens 
at the Council of Nice, at a time when men believed 
that the earth was an extended plane, and had no 
motion, and that the sun, moon, and stars, moved 
round it in 24 hours : it was very easy to conceive that 
there was some place for punishment under it. Such 
has been man's ignorance in old times. 

Nature shows that God is love, not as a passion, 
but as a quality, and if he did not approve of the 
general conduct of the human family, he would no 
doubt strike the entire race from existence. There 
can be no reward for that kind of obedience which is 
induced by fear of punishment. 

All punishment for sin, if any, is in this world. 
The passions of the body and mind are the cause of 
sin, and if punished at all, it must be inflicted on the 
body and mind that committed the unlawful acts. 

God never made man to send him to a place of tor- 
ment. Does it follow, that because there is a God 
there must be a devil ? Is it consistent with the 
wisdom, goodness, justice, and mercy of God, that he 
should make angels whom he must have known would 
rebel against him, if they did rebel ? that he would be 



70 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

obliged to make hell in which to confine and punish 
them ? Why, a prudent and just man knowing the 
fact would act more wisely. My design is to vindicate 
the wisdom and justice of God against such silly im- 
putations. 

Eternal punishment is not proved in the New Tes- 
tament, neither is it consistent with justice. 

Proposition XX. 
Does God require man's worship and prayers ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

It is quite clear that God requires nothing of men 
but what will benefit themselves, for anything which 
man can do or say cannot benefit the Almighty, of 
whose power and glory man can have no conception, 
yet of whose attributes we may judge. 

But then, being conscious of our ignorance, weak- 
ness, and dependence on God, we are induced sponta- 
neously to give him worship and adoration. If we 
pray, it is to ward off some evil or obtain some good. 

When, as children, helpless and uninformed, we pray 
to our earthly father for what we feel we need, or think 
we need, this sentiment we transfer to our heavenly 
Father when we arrive at maturity. 

If I pray to the Governor of a State for a favor 3 
the prayer can be of no possible use to him. If he 
grant the request, the benefit is altogether mine. 

But, although God does not require either our wor- 
ship or prayer as a berfefit to him, yet both are of 
great benefit to man himself, and no doubt, on that 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 71 

account, pleasing to God. Both tend to keep the 
mind and heart in a state of humility suited to piety, 
which is a sentiment in man's nature, and which senti- 
ment, when it is not tainted by superstition, is of the 
highest benefit to the human family. 

The prayers, however, of all mankind would not 
keep your house, when on fire, from being consumed, 
if you did not attempt to extinguish the flame ; nor 
keep a man from drowning who falls into the middle 
of the Atlantic ocean. Nor would all the prayers of 
all the Jew leaders, prophets, priests, or kings, stop, for 
one hour, the earth from turning on its axis. 

It is very clear that God will not alter any thing 
in the range of his eternal laws to gratify all the pray- 
ers of all mankind. Humility and resignation to the 
will of God, are the true ingredients for the mind of 
mortals. 

" Thy will be done," with reverence say the prayer, 
And leave the rest to Heaven's almighty care !" 

The following may be deemed Revelation from th& 
light of Nature : 

1. From a sense of gratitude to the all- wise God, 
whom, by reason, we know exists, we feel bound in 
deep humility to adore and worship him as the parent 
from whom we sprung, and in whom we live and move 
and have our being, and who has so admirably suited 
our minds and bodies to the beautiful creation by 
which we are surrounded, and of which we are a part, 



72 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

that we may be happy if we will, but not because we 
think our worship can be any benefit to him. 

[Note.— It is quite clear that if we did not partake 
of Grod's spirit, we could not perceive the adaptation 
of His works to the purposes intended.] 

2. From our conviction that G-od governs the infi- 
nite worlds that have sprung from his will and power, 
that he directs the affairs of the human family, of 
nations, of communities and individuals, as the Father 
of all, we feel it our duty, as dependent children, 
humbly to pray to him for what we think we need, with 
the same feeling and faith that children ask favors and 
protection from their natural parents, not taking to 
ourselves any merit for so doing, knowing that our 
prayers can be of no benefit to him. As children we 
have hope and faith in our common Father ■ 

3. Believing the soul of man to be a portion of the 
Divine Essence, we feel it to be as much our duty to 
supply it with wholesome mental food, by the acquisi- 
tion of all knowledge suited to its capacious nature, as 
we do to supply our bodies with nutricious materials 
for the support of animal life. 

4. We hold, therefore, that the enlightenment of 
the human mind in every department of knowledge, is 
of the first importance to the well-being and happiness 
of the human family, and that the means of instruc- 
tion should, if possible, be equal to all. 

5. From the pain of mind and body which we feel 
when injured by another, we are admonished to do unto 
others, as we would have others do unto us. This is 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 73 

a duty of man which required no special revelation to 
teach. 

Proposition XXL 
Is man born with an innate moral sense of right 
and wrong ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

The example given by Paley, in his Moral Philo- 
sophy, of a son having " betrayed his father to his ene- 
mies, to be decided on by a person who did not know 
the relation that they bore to each other, is not at all a 
fair one. 

The true question is this. If a man of 21 years of 
age, who had never seen a human being, or other ani- 
mal, should see one man slay another in his presence, 
would an innate sense of right and wrong, tell him 
that the act was wrong ? 

But suppose, instead of one man having killed an- 
other, it was one bull that killed another, whether 
this circumstance would make any difference in his 
feelings ? 

What would this supposed man know about death? 
He could have no innate knowledge that he had to 
die-, and therefore, although he saw a change in the 
man, or bull slain, yet it does appear to me that it 
would look rather as sport to him to see the tragedy 
enacted. It may be asked, where were his sympa 
thetic nerves ? I answer, that he has a susceptibilit 
by a set of nerves called sympathetic, but then their 



74 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

sympathy is formed by education. Man has passed 
from a savage to a civilized state by culture, educa- 
tion, and knowledge. The American savages at this 
day delight in scalping and killing men. They have 
no more mercy or feeling than a cat or tiger in seizing 
and slaying its pray. I conclude that there is the 
susceptibility of an original moral sense of right and 
wrong in man's soul, whether this man's judgment de- 
termines the question or not. 

But such has never been the case, as our first pa- 
rents came together as a pair and possessed sympa- 
thetic nerves, to sympathize with each other, and to 
have affection for each other, and which sympathy would 
immediately form a moral sense of right and wrong 
in each, supposing them to be made as adults, with 
regard to injuring ea,ch other, and this kind of moral 
sense is common to all animals, for those of a kind 
will seldom injure each other. There can be no doubt 
that every man has a moral sense formed by the 
time he arrives at the years of discretion, or passes 
into what is called the age of responsibility, according 
to the instructions and associations he may have had. 
Yet it may be rendered extremely obscure by vicious 
habits. 

Man's soul, with all its original faculties, is derived 
from God, who infused into it his own likeness, as re- 
gards mental operations, and as his Maker's knowledge 
of right and wrong, as well as his justice, is stamped 
on him, man, therefore, has in him the susceptibility of 
acquiring a sense of right and wrong, from the womb. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 75 

But this is all which is fully formed by education, and 
as in the savage, so far as regards enemies, and in 
the civilized man as regards inferior animals, may 
become extremely obscure. An infant can have no 
moral sense until it acquires knowledge enough to 
judge. 

Proposition XXII. 
Is man responsible to God for his actions ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

The first man and every man has been brought here 
without the smallest will or wish of his own, and it 
certainly follows, without any want of reverence, that 
God is bound in justice to afford him the means of 
supporting life, either directly or through man's 
action, and which God has most bountifully done. 

But for what purpose has God placed man on this 
earth ? We can see none but his own pleasure and 
glory; yet there must be some wise design, some 
wheel in the machinery of creation, which man touches, 
although we are not able in our present state of 
knowledge to discern it 

Then on what principle should Adam and Eve have 
been responsible to God for their actions, having made 
no request or agreement with him, having made no 
promise on their part, to perform any act as a return 
for being brought into existence ? Moses to the con- 
trary, notwithstanding. 

We, their descendants, have made no compact with 



76 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

our earthly father, either, through whose agency we 
are brought into being, without our will or wish ; yet 
xrefeel that as children depending on him for support 
and protection, that we are responsible to him for 
Our actions. 

Is life a blessing, as it must have been with our 
first parents ? If it is not, then we are not responsi- 
ble to God for our actions. But what man is there 
under ordinary circumstances, who does not wish to 
live ? And who is there under the enjoyments of life 
that does not dread death ? 

Then, if we deem existence or life a blessing, we 
should be grateful for it to him that gave it ; and the 
strongest inference possible is, that we should use it 
in accordance to what we deem to be the will of God. 
Responsibility for our actions is, therefore, clearly in- 
dicated. 

But of what benefit is it to God that we should 
obey his laws, which are the laws of nature ? Feeble 
creatures of a day, like man, can render the Almighty 
no possible return or aid, nor can his obedience be of 
any use to God. Who, then, gets the benefit of obe- 
dience or the punishment of disobedience ? 

Man himself. God has placed a monitor in man 
that gives him punishment when he disobeys what he 
deems to be God's law, which monitor gives him 
pleasure when he does acts in accordance with what he 
deems to be God's will. 

Now, then, if man persists in those acts which the 
monitor tells him, by the pain he receives, according 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 77 

to the conscience he may have formed, are breaches of 
God's law, he must expect that his accumulated trans- 
gressions are not pleasing to his Maker, and that, 
therefore, he is responsible for his conduct. But if a 
man be so constituted that his reason is so weak as 
not to be able to govern or direct his will or passions, 
he is not responsible for his actions to God or man, 
and still he may not be quite an idiot or fool. This 
is justice. What his punishment may be is quite 
another question, whether it be pain of mind, or 
shortening of the duration of his life, or infliction of 
disease on his body, or the depriving him of a pos- 
terity, or punishment in a future state, I shall leave 
to my opponent, Dr. Chalmers. We say, however, 
that it is not that death which takes all mortals out 
of the world, for that God made inherent in man's 
nature. 

But if there be punishment in a future state, it can- 
not be eternal, for that would be inconsistent with the 
justice of God himself. u God is love" and regards 
his offspring with too tender a care to consign him to 
a place of u fire and brimstone" for doing what God 
knew when he made him he would do, to be tormented 
to all eternity ! Think of God sending a portion of 
his own spirit, which man's soul is, to eternal damna- 
tion ! I should sooner believe that the soul dies with 
the body, than to swallow such a superstition. 

No human law, not founded on the eternal princi- 
ples of justice, is binding on any man's conscience or 
actions, although he may be bound by arbitrary, 



78 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

despotic laws in human society. Justinian says that 
" Law in general is a rule of action proceeding from 
a superior having a right to command, and directed to 
an inferior bound to obey : of which authority on one 
hand, and obligation to obedience on the other, the 
foundation, ox principle, is the good of him to whom 
the rule is directed." 

But as to municipal law, he adds, " Gracio justa, 
jubens honesta, et prohebens contraria." To favor 
justice and honesty, and prohibit the contrary. 

It is to the ultimate interest and happiness of man 
himself to obey all laws founded in justice, whether 
human or divine. 

Again. If there be punishment in a future state, 
it cannot be man's body alone that will suffer, for that 
was under the imperious command and direction of 
his soul, so far as it was able to govern the passions, 
being but the tenement in which the soul resided ; con- 
sequently, if any part of man shall suffer, it must be 
the thinking principle itself, united, perhaps, to a re- 
fined matter, or the elements of matter, which must be 
sentient. Nothing can think unconnected with matter 
in some form, as has been already shown. 

Proposition XXIII. 
Is man the only reasoning animal on earth ? 

DEMONSTRATION. 

Before we can come to anything like a correct deci- 
sion on this proposition, we must institute an inquiry, 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 79 

not exactly into a comparison between the anatomy of 
man, with that of other animals, but between his habits 
and faculties, and theirs, and 

1. We must draw the line between what is called 
instinct and reason. 

Instinct j in all animals, is as gravitation, or cohe- 
sion in matter. It directs them without any act of 
their judgments or wills, being impelled to the act by 
an inherent force regardless of consequences — it is the 
act of God. On the contrary, Reason contrives 
means for the accomplishment of ends in view. 

An infant acts by instinct when it seizes on its 
mother's breast, immediately after it is born, and 
nearly all its acts are instinctive until it begins to 
compare one thing with another, and until it becomes 
capable of judging of their difference. It obeys the 
:jalls of nature 'from instinct, not knowing anything of 
the consequences of disobedience. 

The inferior animals all do the same thing, and if 
they did no more, we must conclude that they are 
guided wholly by instinct, but we do know the con- 
trary to be the fact in all those which man has had a 
fair opportunity of examining. 

Man has the power of pereeiving the external world. 
So have the other animals. Man has memory ; so 
have they. He can distinguish between the persons of 
other animals ; so can they. Men have attachments and 
aversions ; so have they. Men have a greater regard 
for their own race than they have for other animals; so 
has each particular race of animals, excepting the dog in 



80 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

the society of his master. Man has a nervous system, 
and feels pleasure and pain ; so have all the other ani- 
mals, which also feel pleasure and pain. Man is in flu- • 
enced by fear ;. so are they. Man has five senses, sight, 
hearing, smell, taste and touch, or feeling, through 
which he receives knowledge from the surrounding 
creation ; so have they. Man lives by receiving food 
into his body ; so do they. Man inhales the oxygen 
from the atmosphere, to stimulate his blood and give 
it vitality ; so do all land animals, and the inhabitants 
of water receive the same thing from that fluid. Man 
has pride and ambition, or emulation; so have some 
of the other animals, as the. cock, peacock, and horse. 
Man has understanding ; so have the other animals. 
Man has a will, and the power of comparing one thing, 
an idea, or one subject with another, by judging of 
them, and by a series of such judgments, reasoning on 
them, and thereby arriving at a conclusion, and which 
gives him the power of construction or invention. He 
is, therefore, at the head of the animal kingdom, for 
no other animal can do what he does. 

Now let us see how far the inferior animals carry 
these matters. Most of them have perception, 
memory, understanding, will, judgment, and reason, 
as far as it goes. 

I had a horse that would raise the latch of a barn 
door to get in. The same horse would lift a bolted 
gate from the hinges to get into my lawn, and on one 
occasion, having lost a shoe near a blacksmith's shop 
where he never had been shod, stopped and held up his 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 81 

foot to show what he wanted. I have seen cats jumping 
up and seizing the knob of a door, when they wanted 
to enter, all of which acts were not instinctive but ra- 
tional. I have seen a dog, a bull-terrier, watch at the 
end of a barn for rats that went out some short dis- 
tance to drink. To catch the first he ran in a direct 
line for it, and missed it by its turning short and get- 
ting under the barn, but when the next rat came out - 
he waited until it got near the water, then instantly 
turned short round the barn and cut off its retreat. 
There is no instinct here, but absolute good judgment 
and good generalship. 

If dogs had the power of human speech they would 
converse very sensibly with us about our domestic 
concerns. Many of the inferior animals, too, possess 
the moral sense of right and wrong. I owned another 
dog, half Newfoundland, that, not knowing me of an 
extremely dark night, made a violent attack on me, 
but when I spoke, he wept like a child, he was so 
grieved that he should have attacked his best friend. 
This dog never had been whipped, and it was with 
much caressing that I stopped his grief. 

I saw in the country a black bug, known as a tum- 
ble-turd, rolling a small ball along a cow track in a 
lane, and to see how it would act I laid across the 
track a short stick, about an inch and a half in diame- 
ter. When it reached the stick it made two or three 
attempts to push and pull the ball over, but failed, 
and being on the stick let the ball drop in apparent 
anger, and which rolled off from the stick a few inches. 



82 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

The bug then got down and went along the stick tt> 
the end, when it stopped, and looked for a moment to- 
wards the path. It then went to the ball and took it 
to and along the stick to the end, and round and 
along the same to the path, and traveled on as before, 
pushing the ball with its hind legs ! No man's judg- 
ment or reason, as far as it went, could be exercised 
better. It was perfectly good generalship. " Look 
before you leap." 

Why did this little bug keep the smooth track in 
rolling its ball along ? Did it not find by experience, 
that it was much easier to do so than to move it along 
in the grass, where it often has to labor without a 
track ? 

Many of the inferior animals will also resent insults. 
The dog will always do so, and on the very dog or per- 
son who may have offended him. Not the half reason- 
ing, as it has been called, but the full reasoning and re- 
sentment of the elephant are well known. One case is 
this. A tailor sitting near his window in one of the streets 
of London, offered an elephant passing by, which was 
going to an exhibition, an apple, but when the elephant 
put in his probosis or trunk, the latter, instead of the 
apple, ran his needle into his snout. The elephant on 
his way back next day, sucked up some of the puddle- 
water from a gutter, and as he arrived at the tailor's 
shop, stopped and squirted the whole into the tailor's 
face, and all over the articles he was making. Who 
will call this instinct ? 

As a reasoning creature, then, it is clear that man 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 83 

is superior to the other animals only in degree, and 
that there is a scale from the lowest to the highest 
degree of reasoning creatures, at the head of which man 
stands on this earth. There is a gradation in their 
physical organization, and why not in their mental 
organization ? 

So far, then, as human reason can decide, if the soul 
of man be immortal, every other creature possessing 
life like that of man, and the perceiving principle quite 
as acute as man, is so. The amount of knowledge ac- 
quired by each man or animal, can be no standard of im- 
mortality, for an elephant that dies at forty years must 
know more than an infant who dies at seven days old. 

Every race of animals God has designed to live in 
a way peculiar to itself, and from which it never de- 
parts. Moles and worms live underground, rats and 
mice take up their abodes in holes. The moles live 
on the worms, and cats and other such animals live on 
rats and mice. Many races live on grain and fruits, 
others live on grass and herbs. Every race is pecu- 
liarly adapted to its mode of living. The cow, sheep, 
&c, are supplied with a double stomach, but no tusks 
or claws, which proves that they were not made for 
tearing or living on flesh. The teeth and claws of the 
carnivorous animals, such as the lion, tiger, cat, &c., 
show that they were designed to live on animal food, 
and they have never changed, nor will they ever change 
their nature. 

Man, who is not by nature carnivorous, has taken 
example from these animals with tusks and daws, and 



84 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

by the aid of fire lias made himself carnivorous, and 
brought disease and short lives on his offspring. 

Consumption of the lungs, and other diseases being 
hereditary, were first induced by the use of animal 
food, and of all diseases consumption is the most fatal. 

Men who destroy the lives of millions of innocent 
animals, each of which dreads and feels the awful pangs 
of death as severely as man himself, and buries them 
in their stomach, do not obey the law of their nature, 
which is the law of God, and still these men expect to 
go to' heaven ! 

Benevolence, justice, and mercy, are attributes of 
God's being ; man sprung from God, and pretends to 
possess the same qualities, while he copies the cat, 
lion and tiger, whose heads possess not the smallest 
organ of compassion or regret, in having slain their 
prey ! Man, then, instead of living to the average age 
of 100 years, has by this system of diet reduced him- 
self to the average age of 33 years, and the average 
period of his existence on earth appears to be still on 
the wane. 

I have seen men who have lived much on hogs' meat 
appear in their temper and manner to have partaken 
of the nature of the hog. 

Where is the boasted benevolence, justice, and God- 
like mercy of mankind, so long as he pays a premium 
to the butcher to destroy life, and destroys it him- 
self in animals which have nervous systems as perfect 
and sensible as his own, and then makes a sepulchre 
of his body for their flesh ? 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 85 

Here my learned opponent shook his head, and said, 
" I do confess that as regards the slaying of animals 
for man's use, there must be something wrong in the 
text." 

Yes, your messengers must have been hungry when 
they gave that permission. 

Proposition XXIV. 

Was a special revelation necessary, separate and 
apart from the laws of nature, to guide mankind in 
their duty to God and their fellow-man ? 

May it please the court, 

argument. 

In this proposition I shall meet my great opponent 
fair in the face. 

As to the natural history of man, there has been 
something already said, in comparing man's functions 
and faculties with those of the inferior animals. 

Mankind, from the earliest ages of their history, 
have, from a feeling of their weakness, and to secure 
mutual protection, clustered themselves together in 
hamlets, villages, towns, and cities, from which close 
intercouse their social feelings have, no doubt, been 
more strongly developed. 

But other animals have done the same thing. The 
rabbit, the bee, the beaver, &c, &c, and the birds of 
the air, congregate and build themselves habitations. 
Do they need any special revelation for their govern- 
ment ? 



86 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Man has the passions of love and hatred. He will 
get angry and fight. So have they, and so will they. 
Where is the animal on earth without anger or re- 
sentment ? These animals, like men, sometimes fight 
and kill each other. Such is their nature. The pas- 
sions are essential to the well-being of all animals. 

It may be said that the inferior animals have not 
as many contending, passions as man, we'll grant. 
Neither have they as much reason to govern or restrain 
them. If man had no passions, he would not have 
any reason, and passions without reason make either 
an idiot or a madman. 

It is perfectly clear that passions are highly essen- 
tial to and inherent in man, and that reason has been 
given to moderate, to control them. If man's reason 
cannot control his passions, he is not a free agent as 
to his actions, and consequently not responsible to the 
laws of God or man. Neither the beoch, the bar, or 
juries, pay respect enough to this matter. 

I must tell my erudite opponent and his messengers 
that there is not one valuable commandment in the 
decalogue, but what can be discovered by natural 
reason without any special mission. The being of a 
God, which he merely believed, I have proved. Why 
we pray to and worship him, I have shown ; on the 
same principle we should not take his name in vain ; 
and except the institution of the Sabbath, which is a 
mere civil matter and a good one, and the honoring of 
parents, which arises from the relation of parent and 
child, similar to our relation to God, the others can 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 87 

all be deduced from our sensations of pleasure and 
pain, growing out of our nervous system. As I have 
before said, if a man injured me in mind or body, or 
both, I feel pain ; by this I know that if I injure him 
he will feel pain. From these facts, then, the Golden 
Rule is derived. 

" Be you to others just and true. 
As you'd have others be to you ; 
And never do, or say to men, 
Whate'er you would not take again." 

If I murder, steal, bear false witness, or take my 
neighbor's wife, or daughter, or any thing that is his, 
having no right, I give pain. Such are therefore for- 
bidden by the laws of justice and of nature. 

A sage like Moses, instructed in all the wisdom and 
learning of Egypt, or of the Chaldeans, we must ex- 
pect to have been able to legislate, in his age of the 
world, for an ignorant people like the Jews. But 
Moses well knew that without some divine sanction, 
even then the people would not, as they did not, either 
believe or obey his laws. He of course announced 
that God specially revealed them to him, which in one 
sense is true, for they came through natural reason, 
not, however, all originating with him, and natural 
reason is the gift of God. Men are not all endowed 
alike with an intellect sufficiently capacious to arrange 
and make rules for the government of mankind, so that 
Moses must have been, like other great men, endowed 
with a superior mind. 

The mass of mankind in remote ages, could never. 



88 

through natural reason alone, have discovered the will 
of God. The Almighty has most unquestionably, spe- 
cially endowed certain great minds with the capability 
of showing, by the law of nature, what his will is. 
Moses, Confucius, Socrates, Solon, and Mahomet, are 
examples. Governor Young, the Mormon, will no 
doubt establish his creed. But how are we to judge 
whether the writings given to mankind by these sages, 
or any others, are special revelations from God or not? 

We all admit that God has endowed man with the 
capability of judging and reasoning on any subject that 
may be presented to his understanding, but then he 
must have some standard by which to compare, judge, 
and decide. 

The qualities, or attributes, admitted by all Chris- 
tians and others, to be inherent in the Supreme Being, 
are omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, intelli- 
gence, life, will, motion, power, goodness, justice, 
mercy, truth, and love. Love, not as a passion. 

If, then, what is assumed as special revelation be in 
accordance with these, there can be no doubt whatever 
of its truth ; but not as the gift to a special man, only 
through nature. But if, on the contrary, it is shown 
that the assumed revelation is not in accordance with 
them, it is clear that such assumed revelation was not 
specially given of God, but is merely the result of 
man's cogitation, opinions, or conclusions, some of 
which may be in accordance to his will, as drawn from 
what they knew by the light of nature. 

Moses assumes to have received certain special reve- 






AND HEAVEN GAINED. 89 

iations from God, in a cloud on Mount Sinai, and says 
that God, spoke to him from a burning bush ! 

Will God, one of whose inherent attributes is truth, 
communicate to man, on any subject, a falsehood ? 
Will a God of goodness, justice, mercy, and truth, de- 
ceive man in any matter whatever ? Was it not quite as 
easy for God to tell Moses that this earth was a globe 
which revolved round the sun in one year, as to leave 
him in the then false current opinion that it was an 
" immovable extended plane ," round which the heavens 
revolved in 24 hours ? Did not God know that man 
would find out that fact in the end ? 

God either did or did not communicate these mat- 
ters to Moses. If he did not, then Moses has not told 
the truth ; and if he did, he has deceived mankind, 
which is wholly absurd. My opponent must admit 
that, but he now looks quite sad. 

Were Moses to write his history of the creation, at 
the present time, with a full knowledge of geological 
facts staring him in the face, he would not venture t<? 
set apart six days for the creation of this world. 
Geology shows that the earth must have been in exist- 
ence for millions of years. But Moses wanted a divine 
sanction for his seventh day, with a view to show 
man when to labor and when to rest. The laws of 
matter and motion are in the hands of God, and if the 
matter composing the earth had congregated at the 
velocity of light, as I have before stated, it could not 
have formed this earth in less time than eight months, 
coming in from half way to the nearest fixed star 



90 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

(Sirius). But if the elements of matter whicb com- 
pose the earth had traveled at the rate of 60,000 miles 
an hour, the velocity of the earth in her orbit round 
the sun, they would not arrive here in less time than 
7,250 years after the first nucleus was formed. So 
there would at this time be about 1200 years to spare 
in completing the earth. 

It is nonsense to believe that God made the infinite 
visible creation of globes out of nothing. 

" Nothing can from nothing come." 

It has been shown that the elements of matter are 
inherent in, and essential to, the Supreme Being, and 
of equal eternity with him. 

Neither could Moses have known much about the 
anatomy of man, as he states that God took a rib from 
Adam to make a woman, and closed up the place with 
flesh. If man or woman had one rib less on one side 
than on the other, we might believe that Moses made 
a good guess, but we know to the contrary, and God 
would not lie to aid Moses. 

Was it not quite as easy for God to have made 
Adam and Eve, male and female, which he no doubt 
did, out of the same material, the element of which is 
caloric and not slime, or earth, as to have caused 
Adam's side to open, for (with great reverence) it is 
not likely God used a knife, and discharged a rib from 
which to make a woman ? . What a refined creature 
woman must be ! Man from slime, acd woman from 
bone, which is composed of flesh and lime. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 91 

The ignorance and fears of mankind, make the race 
superstitious. In general they will not wait to exam- 
ine (" to crowds belief") from whence comes the author- 
ity which they are called on to obey, so the knowing 
and cunning ones of the earth, have in all ages been 
able to manage and control the multitude, as a father 
can manage and control his children. By such influ- 
ences and management in the education of youth, 
priests and kings have been able to keep their sway 
over the human family, and I readily admit, that where 
clerical instruction does not aim at political control, 
it is highly beneficial to mankind. I deem the clergy 
quite as useful for the instruction of adults in morals 
and piety, as the schoolmaster is in the instruction of 
the rising youth, whatever may be the tenets or form 
of religious worship. 

If invention, as it is said, constitutes poetry, Milton 
is the greatest poet that ever lived in any age of the 
world, for the invention in the Iliad, called the father 
of poems, bears no comparison to that in the Paradise 
Lost, which is an excellent novel and no more. The 
story of the Snake living on earth, is quite poetic, and 
its punishment was quite small for such terrible 
destruction as is pretended grew out of the disobe- 
dience of Adam and Eve. But I have already shown 
that temporal death was not the consequence of any 
act ever committed by our first parents, it being inhe- 
rent in the constitution of all animals, man included. 

Judging, then, by the standard of truth in God, and 
knowing that he will not reveal a lie to deceive man- 



92 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

kind, we must set down the Mosaic account of tlu 
creation of this world, which happened according to him, 
about 2555 years before he wrote, either as the received 
opinion of the Egyptians, or a theory of his own, and 
one that God never specially revealed to him. 

Moses knew nothing of hydraulics, or the equili- 
brium or pressure of fluids, as appears by the ninth 
verse of 1st chapter of Genesis, nor could he be aware 
that either gravitation or cohesion existed. 

Is it consistent with the wisdom, justice, and truth 
of God that he should have commanded Adam and 
Eve not to eat the fruit of a particular tree in the 
garden of Eden, while at the same he left them, accord- 
ing to Moses, so mentally blind as not to be able to 
govern their appetites, and while he knew that they 
would disobey his commandment at the suggestion of 
the pretended serpent ? Moses, then, must be wrong, 
for we cannot lay such a charge to a God of justice 
and truth. 

Again. Moses pretends to have received the ten 
commandments about forty years after he fled from 
Egypt for having slain the Egyptian, one of which is, 
" Thou shalt do no murder." But murder was a crime 
in Egypt, otherwise Moses, who was afterwards a mur- 
derer on a large scale, would not have fled from pun- 
ishment. Where, then, is his revelation on Mount 
Sinai ? This is conclusive that Moses, who caused 
23,000 of the unbelievers in his mission to be slain, 
received no such special revelation from God, and 
being a mere political theologian, having told . this 



A.ND HEAVEN GAINED. 93 

falsehood, we cannot give any credence to the stories 
about the enchanted rod and other such legends. 
This is according to the strict rules of evidence, when 
a witness is tainted with a lie he is rejected altogether 
on the merits. We must not fomet the legend of 
Joshua, and the sun and moon standing still, with 
many other such legends. 

But we are indebted to Moses for the first four 
books of the Old Testament, who in his attempt to 
stretch out the history of man to a great antiquity 
has made some of his heroes live to the great ages of 
from 500 to 969 years. There is nothing in the con- 
stitution of man that can warrant such an assumption. 
The average age of mankind under the most favorable, 
circumstances, had he lived on vegetable food, and re- 
jected animal food, would not exceed 100 years. 
But this may be pardonable in Moses, w r hen it is 
known that the Chinese and other eastern nations, ex- 
tend their history back to twenty thousand years or 
more. 

Geology shows, however, that man is not of very 
remote origin on the earth, or his remains would have 
been found in some of the oldest formations on the 
crust of the globe. 

There can be no clearer proof than this, that Grod 
is constantly acting and bringing new beings into ex- 
istence throughout infinite space, otherwise he would 
not have postponed man's creation to so recent a 
period. 



94 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

" Their forms may change, the elements the samo, 
And still exist in him from whom they came, 
Man's but a link in Nature's endless chain." 

As I before have said, it is one eternal now with 
God, who 

" Ever busy, moves the silent spheres I" 

The whole creation being but one act, in which mat- 
ter is changing its forms, worlds and beings coming in 
and going out of apparent existence, the element re- 
maining the same, there cannot be a doubt that there 
are hundreds of thousands of suns in infinite space, 
which have already burned out, and the races of beings 
who lived by their heat extinct, and hundreds of 
thousands more, which have not yet been ignited into 
flame, the planets revolving round which will yet be 
supplied with intelligent beings by the Father of all ! 
And that the time will come in the annals of God 
when the whole visible creation will be dissolved and 
remodelled by his wisdom and power, into new suns, 
planets, and systems, and of this there may have been 
and will be millions of such revolutions in matter and 
space, which are co-eternal with God ! Glory to his 
name ! 

The problem of the three gravitating bodies in New- 
ton's Principia, shows that all globes are attracted in 
the ratio of their magnitudes. Now look at the irre- 
gularity of the places of the fixed stars, and you will 
be convinced that thousands must be invisible merely 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 95 

for the want of light, for they must be there to main- 
tain the equilibrium of attraction and repulsion which 
we know exists. Witness the galaxy or milky way, 
where thousands are burning. 

It is known in the history of astronomy, also, that 
some stars in the celestial sphere have disappeared^ 
and that other new stars have appeared ! 

They could not have been annihilated, for that 
would have disturbed the whole system of worlds; 
they must, therefore, have merely lost their imponder- 
able matter, their light, by having consumed all the 
carburetted hydrogen, or other inflamable substance, 
by which they were surrounded or composed. 

In these suggestions I am quite as likely to be right 
as Moses was in his theory of creation, yet I shall not 
attempt to persuade my fellow-men that they are reve- 
lations from God other than through natural reason, 
drawn from the visible creation. 

There was, then, no necessity for such a special re- 
velation to man, and the prisoners at the bar if punish- 
ed, which they no doubt are, for their disobedience to 
God's laws, or man's laws, must be punished in this 
world, where they transgress them. 

OF MIRACLES. 

Dr. Johnson defines a miracle to be anything 
above the power of man. Others have defined it to be 
any circumstance out of the regular order of nature. 
What is or is not according to the regular order of 



96 HELL DEMOLISHED,. 

nature, it is difficult to prove, therefore the first defi 
nition is accurate, 

I shall now assist my learned opponent in his argu- 
ment. 

Man is a miracle to man. To make himself is 
above his power. The union of his soul and body is 
a miracle. The light of the sun is a miracle. The 
existence of fire and flame are miracles. The whole 
creation of God to man is a miracle. The incarnation 
of God the Father in the womb of the Virgin, and the 
production of Jesus Christ, is no more a miracle than 
the making our first parents sentient beings. They 
are both miracles. What a miracle it would appear to 
a man to be set down on this earth with all his senses 
and faculties complete, to find himself surrounded by 
the visible creation ! What excessive joy he must 
feel. Adam and Eve, or some other pairs, must have 
been as innocent as infants when they were made, and 
must have acquired their knowledge by observation 
and experience. 

The division of the body and soul of the Saviour 
into a million parts, each part being personally pre- 
sent in the Eucharist, according to the Catholic creed, 
is no more a miracle, than the multiplication and sub- 
division of the body and soul of Adam and Eve by 
pro-creation or reproduction, in utro, of one thousand 
millions of human beings, each one having a separate 
personal existence ! That each person is a portion of 
the element given to Adam and Eve, by G-od, is a fixed 
fact, and is admitted as a miracle. The division in 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 97 

the Eucharist, for spiritual purposes, is quite as 
reasonable, and cannot be refuted until the divinity of 
Christ himself be refuted. 

But while we admit the miracles which are the 
doings of God, it is extremely^loubtful whether he has 
given the power to any mere man, to superadd or do 
anything contrary to the fixed laws of nature, or what 
he is constantly doing himself, which are all miracles. 
Who tells the story of the plagues of Egypt, rivers 
turned into bloody &c, at the command of Moses? 
How did the Egyptians and all others, with animals, 
live without water ? Moses has been already tainted 
with falsehood, so the sooner Christianity gets rid of 
him, the better. Had it not been for Judaism, Chris- 
tianity would never have been disgraced by the legends 
of the Old Testament referred to by its writers. The 
story of the sun and moon having been stopped in 
their course at the request of Joshua, is too puerile to 
be admitted by any rational being, even the most de- 
voted Christian. I have known Jews who disbelieve 
it. The writer of that legend was not aware that the 
earth revolved on its axis in 24 hour's, and went round 
the sun in a year. When God reveals any tiling, as be- 
fore said, he reveals the truth, and will not deceive 
mankind. 

The great majority of the Jews who left Egypt with 
Moses, did not believe in him as a prophet, nor until 
the children who were born in the wilderness, anc 7 
those under twenty years of age, were instructed in hi 
laws, by Joshua and Caleb. Who wrote the hit 



98 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

of the passover ? Was it not quite easy to impose hw 
pretended miracles on the next generation ? Leave 
Moses, then, to the Jews, and let Christianity stand on 
its own foundation, which is Christ, or rather his mes- 
sengers, who were all Jews, and who wrote under their 
Jewish prejudices. 

Moses never preached immortality, or a world tcr 
come. His rewards and punishments were all tem- 
poral. But to this I do not object. Moses never 
preached that a man must be born again, to be happy. 
Born of the Spirit— renewed in his affections and as- 
pirations. Moses never taught men that it required 
the aid of God's grace to bring their powers into sub- 
jection to God's will for man's own true happiness. 
But I have said that man's reason can do this to a 
great extent. 

MOSES. 

Axiom 25. — " God never did nor ever %uill reveal 
or communicate to any man a falsehood ', on any sub-- 
ject human or divine /" 

When men make statements to their fellow-men, 
being ignorant and fallible, they may Ire, or not state 
the truth, but God is trutk ) and never lies or trifles 
with the creatures he has made. 

Now, to prove that Moses was not inspired by God 
to write the history of the creation, which was written 
in the year of the world, according to him, about 2553 ; 
for he was upwards of eighty years of age when hs 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 99 

Wrote the first four books of the Old Testament :-— - 
1st. All the learning of Egypt was not able to dis- 
cover the true system of astronomy, as we now know it 
from actual mathematical calculation, so that Moses 
wrote under the full conviction that this earth was an 
extended plane, round which the sun, moon, and stars, 
revolved in 24 hours, as this at that time was the sys- 
tem of Ptolomy. 

Copernicus followed next, with his system, which 
still left man in the dark, until the immortal Newton, 
that great Mathematician and Astronomer, revealed to 
the world the true solar system, without assuming to 
be inspired by the Supreme Being, or pretending to 
have seen God in a burning bush. 

Now, it is clear, from the 4th verse of the 1st chap- 
ter of Genesis, that Moses, although he could see his 
own shadow, as well as other shadows, that he did not 
know the true cause of the darkness of night, for there 
is no division between the light; which is a positive 
material substance, and darkfiess, which is a mere 
nonentity. So blind was this Moses, under the influ- 
ence of the astronomy of his time, that he could pre- 
sent the subject in no better light, and God, notwith- 
standing the burning bush, did not think proper to 
give him any assistance. 

And, on the same principle, as Moses could not dis- 
cover much beyond the sensible horizon, imagined 
that heaven was just over it, at furtherest, just over 
the rational horizon ; he therefore called it heaven. 

Moses, was not aware that the sun was the centre 



100 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

of our system of worlds, that he revolved on his axis 
in about 25 days, that the planets and satellites, then 
known, and since discovered, revolved round orbits of 
greater or less extent, embracing the God of day in 
or near their centre. That Mercury, Venus, Mars, 
Vesta, Juno, Palles, Ceres, Saturn, and Herschell, 
belonged to this system of worlds ; and he must have 
looked on the fixed stars as so many windows in the 
higher heaven. But still God would not enlighten 
him. 

So much for the burning bush. Moses and Joe 
Smith were great jugglers ! 

Again, in Genesis, verse 9, chapter 1, Moses says that 
God said, " Let the waters under the heaven be gath- 
ered together in one place." Now from this it is clear 
that Moses could have known nothing whatever of gra- 
vitation, or cohesion, although he may have seen water 
run down an inclined plane, or it would not require 
the power of God to cause the water to flow from the 
higher parts of the earth to the lower, in regard to the 
centre of gravity ; and no man will suppose that God 
did not give the earth its power of attraction from the 
moment the first nucleus was formed, for gravitation 
in this globe is made up of millions of cohesions, so 
that " all the parts take?i together make the ivhole." — 
Euclid. Neither did God put Moses right in this mat- 
ter, and surely he would not suffer him to mislead 
mankind, if he had given Moses any special mission 
whatever. God is truth, and will not lie or deceive 
his creatures. 



AND HEAVEN GALNED. 101 

In the 2d chapter, 13th verse, of Genesis, Moses 
tells the Jews that the gold of the land in which the 
garden of Eden was placed, was u very good" Was 
this a revelation ? The Jews, however, have ever after 
been extremely fond of gold, from whom, no doubt, 
the Gentiles took the fever. 

In the 3d chapter of Genesis, which is so puerile as 
to be beneath criticism, Moses says that Adam and 
Eve " sowed fig leaves and made themselves aprons," 
but he does not tell us how long this was after God 
made the pair, who must have been as innocent as in- 
fants for a long period after they were made, possess- 
iDg the mer^ instincts of the lower animals in hunting 
up their food, for no sensible person will suppose that 
as God had given them the jive senses, by which they 
could learn, like other animals, from the visible crea- 
tion, that God endued them with a supernatural power 
from which they could make no mistakes. If he bad, 
it is not to be supposed that they would have dis- 
obeyed Moses supposed injunction, not to eat of the 
forbidden tree. A full grown pair, like Adam and 
the beautiful Eve, could not have been in each other's 
company very long, without the keenest appetite of 
love, and must have, from instinct, like other animals, 
entered on the pro-creation or reproduction system, 
for this instinct is still found in children of five years 
old, without having the smallest example to influence 
their conduct. 

But if Moses tells the truth, God knew they would 
disobey him. Did God ever give a command that he 



102 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

had not the power to enforce, or did he, like a simple 
man, trifle with the simple pair ? 

Moses ! Moses ! what a story you had from 
that burning bush ! 

But Moses says that the penalty which God put on 
Eve for transgressing his command in eating of the 
tree of knowledge of good and evil, 16th verse, "I 
will multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions, in sor- 
row shalt thou bring forth children. " Now, there can 
be no doubt that no animal in the world can bring 
forth young without some pain. Why did not Moses, 
then, say that God, in consequence of woman's sin, 
afflicted every female of every race on earth ? Moses 
does not say that God made woman anew, nor added 
nor deducted anything from so perfect an organization 
as she must have had in coming from the hand of her 
Maker. 

But it is quite clear that the organization which he 
first gave her, remains with her to this day, as well as 
all the incentives by which she is influenced. 

The man who ever has had a cramp in his leg by 
the contraction of the muscle of that limb, feels nearly 
the same kind of pain and distress that his mother did 
in bringing him into the world. It is the contraction 
of the fibres of the womb, that in parturition causes 
the pain, for without this contraction a child never 
could be born. Although Moses was a murderer on 
a large scale, he was no accoucherer. This then was 
no penalty, and God never revealed it as such. 

In the 18th verse, Moses has it that God said to 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 103 

Adam, as Ins punishment, " Thistles and thorns shall 
it bring forth to thee, and in the sweat of thy face 
shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out 
of which thou wast taken, for dust thou art and unto 
dust thou shalt return." But in all this Moses does 
not give us one word about the immortality of the 
soul of man after death. This it appears he knew 
nothing about, and God did not think proper to en- 
lighten him out of the " burning bush." 

It would appear from the 1st chapter that the 
creation was complete, and that God pronounced all 
things that he had made as good, but in the 18th verse 
of the 3d chapter, it appears that thistles and thorns 
were made expressly to punish Eve and her posterity I 

In the 19th verse, " Man is to return to the dust 
from which he sprung." Now, this can be refuted by 
every old grave-yard in the world, for after 100 years, 
or perhaps less, man's body will have wholly evaporated 
in the shape of carburetted hydrogen gas, which is 
inflamable, and will leave nothing behind but a little 
lime, which nature used to stiffen the bones, and even 
this is inflamable. This gas accumulates in such a de- 
gree in some close coffins, from the decomposition of 
the body, that they explode. The ignis fatuus, or 
will o' the wisp, is caused by the ignition of this gas, 
from old horses, or graveyards, which things have ter- 
rified the vulgar and superstitious in all ages. 

In the 15th verse of the 4th chapter of Genesis, 
Moses states that God would not allow Cain to be 
slain for the murder of his brother Abel. Then 



L04 



HELL DEMOLISHED, 



Moses, why did you not follow this example in your 
laws? 



LENGTH OF THE LIVES OF THE ANTIDELUVIANS, FROM 
ADAM UP TO NOAH. 

Adam, ------ 930 years. 

Seth, - 912 

Enos, 905 

Cain, 910 

Malaleel, ------ 895 

Jared, - - - - - - - 962 

Enoch, 365 

Mathusela, - - - - - - 969 

Lamech, ------ 777 

Noah, 600 



8225 



There is not, I will venture to say, an anatomist or 
physiologist in Christendom, that believes the foregoing 
statement of Moses as to the ages of his heroes, those 
who lived before what is usually called " Noah's flood." 

The nature of every animal, as well as man, is fixed 
under a certain law of God, from which they never 
depart. The longevity of every race is known from 
the earliest ages of natural history to be about the 
same up to the present time. 

The average age to which men live in cities, is about 
33 years. A man of 66 has as good a chance for life 
as an infant just born. We do know from the 






AND HEAVEN GAINED. 105 

history of man, as far back as any reliance can be placed 
upon it, that his age have never much exceeded 100 
years, although there have been some few who have 
lived to 160 years, or thereabout. But in modern 
times the body of man has been most minutely exam- 
ined from the foetus in utro, to men of 100 years old. 
In many of these examinations I have myself aided. 
All the more important examinations have been re- 
corded in the various reports of the most able medical 
men, and the conclusion has been, that man never at 
any time, on the world, enjoyed, under similar circum- 
stances, a longer time of existence than at present. 

The man, while young, who consumes a large quan- 
tity of animal food daily, from its exciting properties 
need not expect to live a great while, especially if in a 
hot climate. It causes large quantities of bile to flow 
from the liver into the stomach, which may induce any 
kind of fever, even from the debility consequent on 
typhus fever to an intermittent. Animal food is the 
high pressure of the human body, which, like alcohol, 
will work its own cure, death. 

Now, animal food has been used from the time of 
Adam, if we believe Moses, for he says that Abel was 
a keeper of sheep, and this is against the longevity of 
his ancients, the joint lives of nine of whom, makes 
8225 years. 

The chief cause of a man's death, who lives accord- 
ing to the strict rules of nature, is the ossification of 
his heart, arteries, and even glands ! If man could 
by any invention in medicine, prevent the accumula- 



106 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

tion of lime which hardens the bones, and ossifies the 
glands, his average age would no doubt be 100 years. 

In very old men, I have found the arteries at the 
wrists, complete pipe-shanks ^ so much so that I could 
feel no circulation whatever. In others I have found 
the right ventracle of the heart ossified, and in others 
the neck of the bladder, and in one woman the whole 
ostincie of the womb, as firm as the femur or thigh- 
bone. 

These facts show, then, that man was never designed 
of God for a very long life on this earth, notwithstand- 
ing the longevity Moses gives his antediluvians. God 
never inspired Moses to counteract his established 
laws. 

So contracted were the minds of the ancients, 
including Moses, that God was deemed to be of the 
same shape with man, possessing legs, thighs, body, 
head, and heart ! Moses states that God made man 
in his own image and likeness, and to confirm this he 
says, that Adam heard the voice of God, as he (God) 
was walking in the garden, and that he talked to Adam 
and held a conversation with him about his sin of diso- 
bedience, but the New Testament contradicts this, for 
it says that, " No man hath seen God at any time" 
Which of these two are we to believe ? 

Moses again says, in the 6th verse of the 6th chap- 
ter of Genesis, that God said, " it repented him that 
he had made man on the earth." The note to this, in 
the Catholic Bible, is as follows : " God, who is un- 
changeable, is not capable of repentance, grief, or any 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 107 

oiler passion." This is true, but then how silly it is 
to write such a thing of the Supreme Being, who knew 
just as well what man would be before he made him, 
as he did before Noe entered into the ark. 

Moses was, therefore, not the inspired person he 
pretends to be. Monks and priests will try to explain 
this away. 

Alas ! ye monks, your calling's gone, 

For you'll no more get paid ; 
Nor can ye now rely upon 
The dupes that make the silly throng- 
Then flee I you've lost your trade ! 

noe's flood. 

I shall undertake to show that this flood was pre- 
sumed to have taken place from the appearance of 
flowing water on the face of the earth, and this was all 
the geology that Moses or the ancients knew. And I 
shall satisfactorily explain those appearances on the 
earth's surface, as well as the depth of the oceans and 
elevation of the mountains. Moses has worked the 
presumed flood up into an interesting novel. 

It is well known to astronomers, that suns and 
planets are constantly coming into and going out of 
apparent existence, throughout infinite space. Ancient 
charts of the celestial sphere have not on them some 
stars that are on modern charts, and modern charts 
have not on them some stars that were on ancient 
charts. 



108 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

This shows that some suns have consumed all the 
inflamable matter which they contained, carburetted 
hydrogen, or some other combustible element, and that 
although the nucleus is there, to keep up the equili- 
brium of globes in space, on the principle of Newton's 
three gravitating bodies, yet the inflamable air is all 
consumed, so that the globe can be seen no more, and 
the consequence is, that all the planets, primary and 
secondary, which revolved round it, are in darkness, 
excepting as to the light of the starry heavens. This 
will no doubt be the fate of our solar system, as all 
created things are in a transition state. 

On the other hand, there are numerous globes in 
space, which have not as yet been ignited into flame, 
but which are either, by the immediate hand of God, 
or by spontaneous ignition, constantly bursting forth 
into flame. Witness the dark spaces in the heavens, in 
comparison with the galaxy or milky way. 

That this earth is of meteoric origin, is not only 
allowed by that great philosopher Leibnitz, but by all 
astronomers from his time down to the present. The 
flood philosophers are not to be noticed. 

Whether thrown out from the sun, which is not far 
from eight hundred thousand miles in diameter, or 
formed as a meteor in the heavens, which is much 
more likely, having carried a body of gasses with it • 
which forms water, is of no importance, as the earth, 
at this moment, has seven thousand of the eight thou- 
sand miles in its diameter, of red hot if not white hot 
lava, which composes its interior. This is satisfacto* 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 109 

rily proved by the increasing heat as we descend into 
deep mines or shafts as far as man has yet penetrated. 
That there is a certain depth where water ceases to 
exist, there is no doubt, for when it comes in contact 
with the violently hot nucleus, steam is instantly gen- 
erated, which is the cause of most earthquakes and 
volcanoes. 

In the origin, the whole globe was as hot on the out- 
side, as it is now in the centre, and consequently all 
the water was suspended in the shape of clouds or 
steam in the atmosphere, and after many ages, millions 
of years, perhaps, the surface of the earth was so much 
reduced in heat, that the waters took their place on 
it, the earth still being a perfect sphere, which had the 
water equally over all its surface. 

And after many more ages the crust of the earth 
having cooled, it fell into the fluid mass of fire be- 
neath, which forced the mountains out on the other 
side. This then caused the flowing of the water from 
the high parts of the earth into the lower, which 
formed oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes, and left other 
marks of a flood on the land, so that Moses from the 
appearance on the surface, supposed there must have 
been some mighty flood from its having rained forty 
days and forty nights. The story of Noe's ark must 
necessarily follow. 

Now, that Moses' forty days and nights' rain could 
not have done this, is quite certain, from the geologi- 
cal fact, that there is to be seen on almost every part 
of the globe, and under the surface, boulders, or 



HO HELL DEMOLISHED, 

great stones of a ton or more weight, and others much 
smaller, that must have been rolled, probably for ages, 
under the waters on the bottom of an ocean. There 
are some of them imbedded in the sand of Brooklyn, 
near New York, and on the surface, that have all their 
corners worn off by attrition, as the pudding stone 
and others, which must have come from the Catskill 
mountains, 100 miles off, where that stone is found, 
and many others, worn so as to form a sand course or 
fine. 

All stones in quarries not exposed to running water 
or tides in an ocean or sea, have square corners, and 
on the other hand those under running water or tides, 
are washed by rolling into sands, or left in a rounded 
state, according to the attrition they may have under- 
gone. Moses did not tell us about any of the Ameri- 
can Indians having been taken into Noe's ark, although 
every mark of a mighty flood shows that it rushed 
over America, north and south ! As Noe and his 
sons did not belong to the Indian tribes, God must 
have since made a new creation, separate and apart 
from the seed of Canaan, who, says Moses, was cursed 
into a negro, on account of his father having laughed 
at Noe's nakedness ! 

Where has Moses told us about the creation of the 
American race of red men ? The Atlantic Ocean cut 
off, until very recently, all communication with the 
eastern world, and as we find no Indian of the Ameri- 
can stamp, in any part of Europe, Asia, or Africa, or 
the islands adjoining, even to Behring's Straits, we are 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. Ill 

forced to conclude that neither Moses nor Noe ever saw 
one. Moses' tale, then, of his single pair, is demol- 
ished. Geology will not lie to suit any man's theory 
of creation, so I conclude that Moses, the assassin and 
historian, had no special revelation from God. 

Now, after convicting Moses as the messenger on 
whose truth the truth of all your other messengers 
must be founded, it is hardly worth naming that fine 
pillar of salt , which he says the Almighty made out 
of Lot's wife. Well, all I've got to say to this story 
is, as God does nothing in vain, salt must have been 
scarce, at that time, in that part of the world. I am 
assured by an honest Catholic, that one of the early 
Pope's received a relic, consisting of one of her hands, 
and is now in possession of His Holiness, Pius IX., 
and that it is most excellent salt ! This salt, I pre- 
sume, preserves the Holy Catholic Church from 
putrescency. 

Note. — Archbishop f John, of New York, refused 
to consecrate the "Washington Cemetery, of 40,000 
lots of 100 square feet each, which belongs in part to 
the author of this work, because, I presume, he had a 
larger profit from his own, Mount Calvary. 

Oh, give Arch, f John a splendid coach and six, 
Then let him try to cross the river Styx.* 

I would wish to know if a few bushels of salt shook 
over the grounds of that beautiful Washington Ceme- 

* Styx, in heathen mythology, is a river of hell. 



112 

tery, would not make it pure enough, in which to de« 
posit some of the extremely pious Catholic people, for 
whom the author has a very high regard. 

THE BURNING BUSH AND ENCHANTED ROD OF MOSES. 

After convicting Moses of gross errors and false- 
hood in Nature, it is scarcely worth note to allude to 
the burning bush and enchanted rod, which he says 
was turned into a snake and did so many other strange 
things, of which he makes the Almighty the arch magi- 
cian or juggler. Yet it may not be amiss to note the 
great care he took to drive Jethro's sheep in the wil- 
derness, and go on a mount, where he would be hid 
from all eyes, that no evidence could be had against 
his assumed mission. And where is the evidence of 
his miracles, other than as told by himself? Not a 
pen has ever touched the subject from a cotemporary 
with himself. 

But God has never made a miracle to compel any 
man to perform a special act. How easy it would be 
to him to influence a king or emperor to perform any 
act without the aid of juggling ? But Moses, with 
great art, wished to let his unlettered, unscientific 
dupes know that there is another power, the devil or 
some evil spirit, who can juggle nearly as well as 
Deity ! Nothing irreverent intended. 

But Moses wishes to let us know that God forgave 
him the crime of murder of one man, and if he wrote 
Exodus after he slew the twenty-three thousand Jews 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 113 

chat would not believe in his mission, that this also 
was sanctioned for an example for future ages, and 
has been very faithfully acted on by the Holy Church 
of Rome and other sects in past ages. That simple 
circumstance of God's telling the Jews to rob the 
Egyptians of their jewelry and other property, was an 
example for Ferdinand and Isabella, of Spain, to 
throw into the cursed Inquisition, and banish, about 
two hundred thousand Moors, the best people in Spain, 
for the purpose of robbing them of the large estates 
they had accumulated by their industry. Barnum, of 
the Museum, is a trifle to such pious humbugs. 

But now the light of knowledge has suppressed 
nearly all these cruelties which were formerly done 
under the holy sanction of religion. It is not that 
pure religion is bad, but that men have been in all 
ages, where they had power, and in the absence of fear, 
mostly hypocrites and monsters. 

" Cucullus nonfacit monachum" 

In Numbers, chapter xv. 35, is again shown the 
bloody disposition of the arch juggler Moses, when in 
the wilderness he ordered (his own account, of course,) 
a poor man to be stoned to death by his dupes, for 
gathering a few sticks of wood on the Sabbath day ! 
This was of course to keep sacred his imposture, al- 
ready refuted, as having sanctified the seventh day, on 
which he says God told him he rested from the labor 
of making this mighty globe, with the sun and moon, 
in the other six days ! Would any human law in 
Christendom put a man to death at this time for such 
^armless offence ? The penalty of breaking the Sab- 



114 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

bath in this State, is but 75 cents. But Moses was a 
great despot and a wicked liar, for God, whose mercy 
is over all men, never told him any such thing, (neither 
mercy nor justice is a passion) and being already 
tainted with falsehood, he is therefore not to be be- 
lieved. 

Joe Smith and his followers have been, and are now 
making, together with a fellow called Ferris, a Mor- 
mon advocate, a strong effort to imitate this lying 
Jew. 

We do not blame Moses for those laws and rules 
given to the Jews, no matter how he may have learned 
them, which are in accordance with the laws of nature's 
God, but for his impudence in assuming to them and 
the world, to be the chosen vessel of the Almighty to 
carry out his will among men. Moses was versed in 
all the learning of Egypt,, and was therefore well pre- 
pared to carry out on ignorant men his imposition. 

But here I shall show that Moses was neither ac- 
quainted with the components nor weight of the at- 
mosphere, nor did he know ought about the cause of 
the clouds. 

He said that from a great spring the water was 
raised up into heaven, and then came down in the 
shape of rain. He does not say where this big spring 
was located. This shows that he knew nothing about 
the immense meteorology which embraces the evapo?'- 
ation which the sun raises daily from every ocean, 
sea, lake, and river, as well as from the land. 

Now, there are certain points of congealation, or 
freezing, in our atmosphere, from the equator to each 



4.ND HEAVEN GAINED. 115 

pole, N. and S., which are greatest at the equator in 
the centre of the torrid^zone, and least at the poles, 
and which is proved by the snows that fall on the 
mountains of the hot climates, on which snow is found 
the year round. These points decrease from the equa- 
tor to the poles with the latitude of the place. If it 
be four miles elevation from the earth at the equator, 
it is then but two miles from the surface of the globo 
all round. 

Now, when the sun is over the equator, if we take 
the point of congelation at four miles, or 7,040 feet, 
which is near the fact, then the average point all round 
the earth will be but half that, 3,520, as at the lati- 
tude of 45°. So that if these two miles of space all 
round the earth, were filled with clouds of evaporation 
and condensed into water, the 1,700 part of this is all 
that could be on the surface of the earth, when all 
down, which water would be about six feet deep, with- 
out making any allowance for the running off of the 
waters to restore the oceans and seas, from which it 
must have come, to their usual spheric level. By 
actual experiment it is proved that one cubic inch of 
water, makes 1,700 cubic inches of steam. Now, these 
six feet in depth of water, falling, in forty days and 
nights, would not drown the world, and if it took a 
longer time to fall so much the worse for the story of 
Noah's flood by the arch-juggler Moses, the Jew. 
And we must further add that for a long time pre- 
vious to the falling of the Mosaic clouds, God must 
have suspended the action of the lightning or electric 



116 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

fluid, which we know from experiment, causes th 
union of the component parts (oxygen and hydrogen 
gases,) of the vapor in the shape of clouds, suspended 
in the air in an invisible way, and which we know by 
its condensing on cold walls in the spring of the year, 
and by other means. But we have discovered by ex- 
periment that the quantity of rain which falls in one 
year, on an average, all over the earth, is but about 
twenty inches in depth, so that it would take about 
four years to rain six feet deep, were the water to re- 
main without soaking into the ground, or running off 
into the seas and oceans. We must, however, take 
into consideration that one cubic foot of atmospheric 
air weighs but one ounce, whereas one cubic foot of 
water, at its maximum density, 40° Fahrenheit, 
weighs eighty pounds. That is one 1280 part. The 
atmosphere, then, to the point of congelation, from 
which hailstones must and do fall, as well as snow, 
could not sustain such a quantity of water as would 
drown this earth even were it not to run off. It must 
therefore be seen by every intelligent man, not tainted 
with prejudice, bigotry, or superstition, that Noah's 
flood, or Noah's ark never existed, excepting as a 
theory of the earth in the mind of Moses. 

Moses in the 20th chapter of Exodus, and 5th 
chapter of Deuteronomy, states that God said he is " a 
jealous God." 

In a note under the 7th chapter of Genesis, sanc- 
tioned by Archbishop Hughes, the Catholic Church 
says that " God, who is unchangeable, is not capable 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 117 

of repentance, grief, or any other passion." — Douay 
Bible, In this I fully concur. He is not capable, 
therefore, of the worst of passions, the green-eyed 
monster, jealousy, under which men will murder, so 
that the Church of Rome through Archbishop f John 
nullifies one of Moses' ten commandments, and we 
think, so far as the passion of jealousy goes, properly 
so. Moses believed God to exist in the shape of man, 
with a heart and other members. It never struck 
Moses that man was destined to live in a future state, 
nor that the perceiving principle in him was, or is im- 
mortal. All his punishments were temporal, or rather 
relating to the body, even hell itself, for the doctrine 
of " Life and Immortality" appears to have been 
brought to light in the Gospel, according to the mes- 
sengers of my opponent, Dr. Chalmers. 

In the 16th chapter, 32d and 33d verses, Moses says 
in regard to the two hundred and fifty unbelieving 
Jews — Catholic version of the Bible — that the earth 
opened and devoured them, their wives, children, tents 
and substance, into hell, and that they went down 
alive into hell ! the ground closing upon them. Is this 
like the justice of " a God of truth and justice," to 
punish the innocent with the guilty, even if the story 
were true ? But, according to Bishop Hughes, God 
has no passion. — Chapter 6, verse 6, in a note in 
Douay Bible. 

But these verses show clearly where Moses thought 
hell was located, according to his notions of the astro- 
nomy of his times, notions that were extended to the 



118 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

time of Galileo, whose books were burned and himself 
thrown into a dungeon, by the Pope of Rome, because 
he said that the earth was not a fixed piece of 'matter ', 
but that it actually moved round the sun ! Nor would 
one of the bigoted Cardinals look through Galileo's 
telescope lest he should be convinced that the planet 
Jupiter had satellites or moons revolving round him 1 

How far below the earth's diameter, 8000 miles, 
which Moses knew nothing about, he designed them to 
sink, he does not say, nor would God give him any 
light on the subject. Such was the special mission of 
Moses. 

A fine example for Popish punishments for all those 
heretics, and their families, who will not believe in the 
infallibility of the Church of Rome, nor in her dogmas 
or doctrines. A fine example for the despotism and 
cruelty of pretended theological power. May the 
Supreme God, whom I daily worship, save us from the 
sentence of a seeond Moses, the Pope of Rome, and all 
who hang their faith in St. Peter's key. Most of the 
other sects are bigoted enough, but, except the Maho- 
medans, I think they do not proscribe all others. 

" Education forms the plastic mind, 
Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined. " 

I think I have elsewhere observed that in the his- 
tory of the world there has not been an exclusive reli- 
gious sect, except those now living as nations of the 
same faith, but what has been destroyed. The Maho- 
metans must go next, and no doubt by the light of 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. Il§ 

knowledge the Roman Catholics next, notwithstand- 
ing that great rock St. Peter, I highly esteem most 
Catholics as individuals, but I cannot bear the exclu- 
sive pretensions of their church to heaven, neither do 
I the exclusive pretensions of any other, 

In the 34th chapter and 10th verse of Deuteronomy, 
it is again stated that the Lord knew Moses face to 
to face ! It is very certain then that not only Moses 
and Aaron, but also Joshua, and perhaps all the Jews 
living at that time, believed the Almighty to be bodily 
in the shape of a man ! What a revelation that must 
have been ! 

Axiom 25.— u God never did or ever will reveal or 
communicate a falsehood to any man, on any matter, 
human or divine." a 

The story, too, about the conversion of the waters 
of Egypt into blood, no doubt had its origin in the 
little animals, called by naturalists pulices arbores-* 
centes, which in hot climates, in coming out from their 
holes into the pools and rivulets, for propagation, will 
in a single night render the water as red as blood ; yet 
they are so small as not to be seen individually with- 
out a microscope. 

And again, in regard to Noah's flood, we ask, Was 
the great Salt Lake of Utah, or the Caspian Sea, left 
by the rains of Noah's flood, when it is well known 
that evaporation, except in the case of water-spouts^ 
never takes up anything from the ocean but fresh 
water, whereas these two great bodies of water have 
been ever salt. But man himself is not of very ancient 



120 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

date on this globe, for his remains are not found in 
any of the lower strata of the earth as those of others 
are. 

Neither can Moses' account of the recent creation 
of the earth be true, as is proved by Drs. Mitchell, 
Volney, and Cuvier, in their fossil remains, not only 
in the vicinity of Paris and other parts of Europe and 
Asia, but in the immense quantities of such marine 
remains, such as shells, fishes, &c, found imbedded 
in the solid rocks along the shores of Lake Erie, 
Niagara, Black Rock, as well as on the Hudson and 
Black rivers, in the State of New York, and of races not 
now known to man ; and in addition to this there are 
immense beds of shells on the tops of mountains, which 
all go to show that this earth has been for uncounted 
ages under the sea, and that numerous sudden immer- 
sions and upheaving of certain parts of it have hap- 
pened in the lapse of ancient time, perhaps millions of 
years ago. 

Baron Cuvier, in his Geology, states that in excava- 
tions made near Paris, in France, there were found 
productions of the sea, then still lower, productions 
of the land; then still lower, productions of the sea 
again, and next and lower of the land. These show 
that the ocean has covered those places for ages, after 
which the land was again thrown out, and animals of 
various kinds inhabited it for ages, when it was again 
immersed, destroying all the living beings on it, and 
so on ! 

Now, these facts Moses did not know and God it 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 121 

appears did not reveal them to him m the burning 
bush, or on the mount. So that from appearances of 
the running of water on the surface of the earth, he to 
account for it invented Noah/s flood. 

His forty days and nights of rain could not do all 
these things above stated. In fact the whole of those 
theories of the learned Jew, were only the first edition 
of the Arabian Nights 1 Entertainments, which fol- 
lowed in the track of the u Beauties of Moses." Who 
will say now, Dr. Chalmers, that this great messenger 
of yours, on whom all your other messengers are 
founded, was specially inspired by the Almighty to 
reveal his will to the human race ? Here my oppo- 
nent looked wonderfully puzzled. 

My position, then, at starting, is fully sustained by 
the discovery of facts in nature, viz. : that no man on 
this earth ever had from God a special revelation re- 
lating to nature, morality, or religion, or what the 
will of God is, but that what man does know has been 
gleaned from observation, experiment, and natural 
reason. Man is consequently just such a creature as 
God designs him to be. 

Moses, in his day, was not even in the vestibule of 
knowledge. He even did not prophecy that we, in 
this time, should get married, thousands of miles 
apart, by lightning ! Nor, with all his assumed 
divinity, in talking ivith God face to face ! has he 
said a word about our steamboats, locomotives, or 
railroads, yet I will myself prophecy that the time will 
soon arrive, when men shall cross the ocean and the 



122 HELL DEMOLISHED 

land in boats propelled by steam, I do not mean by 
wheels, but by regular propellers in the stern, fixed on 
the best angle, and steered by a tail. Now, I am 
quite aware that " Baalambs Ass" will bray at this ; 
yet I will add, and let the ass bray again, that men, 
as Bishop Wilkins has said, will yet invent springs 
for wings, by which they can fly like birds through 
the air. 

Man partakes of the nature of the source from whom 
he sprung ; what then can stop his progress in the in- 
tellectual world, or in the exercise of the genius God 
has given him ? 



C HRISTI AN ITT, 

Now, I say to my learned opponent, the counsel on 
the other side, that no evidence whatever of the truth 
of Christianity, can be drawn from the authority of 
the writers of the New Testament, whether Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, or any other of those 
persons who are said to have adopted the Christian 
faith. For there is no certain proof that such persons 
ever existed. We might as well say that the Gospel 
under four names was written by the same hand. 
Plato and Xenophon, pupils of Socrates, never named 
each other in their writings. Josephus, whose history ? 
which embraces the whole time, even that of the 
alleged crucifixion, has but interpolations on the 
subject, made by some monk. It appears by the 



AND HEAVEN GAINED 123 

Douay version of the New Testament, that St. John 
the Evangelist was alive in the year a. d. 96, and that 
he returned from the Isle of Patmos (where he had 
been banished by Domitian, and where it is said he 
wrote the Apocalypse) to Ephesus. 

It has been charged that John, seeing that Jerusalem 
was destroyed and the Jews carried off by the emperor 
Titus into bondage, with a view to fulfill the pro- 
phecies of the Old Testament, and to establish a new 
religion on the ruins of Judaism, wrote part of, or the 
whole of the New Testament for that purpose, insert- 
ing fictitious names. Certainly such a thing could 
have been published at that remote period from the 
scenes of what is described. Or it could have been 
written about the time stated. 

Tacitus was born a. d. 57 ', and wrote his " Annals" 
about the year 100. Dr. Chalmers asserts that Taci- 
tus states that the crucifixion took place " in the time 
of Tiberius." Tacitus asserts no such thing in the 
original copy, but that it is said that it was so. In 
him, my learned doctor, your messengers have no as- 
sistance whatever. 

Celsus wrote about a. d. 176. He was the most 
violent enemy the Christians ever had in early times. 
He was answered by Origen, a. d. 249. • But the 
Christians took good care to destroy every one of the 
works of Celsus against them, so that all we know 
about the writings of Celsus are in Origen and Lard- 
ner. Will the Mormon doctrines be deemed true if 



124 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

a writer a hundred years hence should name and abuse 
them as a set of fanatics and impostors ? 

Your messengers, therefore, my dear Dr., have no 
support whatever from Celsus. 

Dr. Chalmers admits, paragraph 14 of his Essay: 
" We should be prepared to follow the light of evi- 
dence, though it ma,y lead us to conclusions the most 
painful and melancholy. That we should give up 
everything to the supremacy of argument. That we 
should train our minds to the hardihood of abstract 
and unfeeling intelligence. That we should be able 
to renounce, without a sigh, all the tenderest prepos- 
sessions of our infancy, the moment that truth de- 
mands of us the sacrifice." 

The Douay version of the Testament says, that about 
the year 68, Peter and Paul went to Borne and suf- 
fered martyrdom soon after. Now, these statements, 
together with the traditions of the Church of Rome, 
are not sufficient evidence to convince an impartial 
inquirer that Jesus Christ ever existed, or that the 
New Testament is any more than one of those plans 
which have been common in the eastern world, to es- 
tablish a religion on the credulity of mankind, who 
have always been disposed to worship something dif- 
ferent from the true God. 

In 1835, this year being 1855, the editor of the 
New York Herald published a speech which he said 
was made by the author of this work, at a public 
meeting held in the city of New York, at Washington 
Hall, which can be found in the files of that paper. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 125 

That publication could be brought as better evi- 
dence of my having made that speech, which I did not 
deny, than anything that can be produced in favor of 
the miracles of Christianity after a lapse of 1855 years. 
But it so happens that I never made any such speech, 
was not there, nor was there any meeting there at the 
time stated ! The publication was made as a mere 
matter of sport by the editor of the New York Herald. 

Mahomet was opposed by his own people at first, 
but a generation established him as a true prophet , 
about 600 years after the Christian era. 

Joe Smith died a martyr for his pretended religion, 
and if not at present, in a generation or two, he will 
be established among the Mormons as a true prophet 
of God. What will not men do to establish a new 
religion ? 

Martyrdom only proves the sincerity of the martyr, 
not the truth of the doctrines for which he may have 
suffered. 

The history of a people or nation unconnected with 
a religion is received by mankind as true, much sooner, 
and with less doubt, than the history of any religion 
promulgated by its advocates, and which is always 
suspected to be combined with superstition or fanati- 
cism, because ordinary history puts no restraint on 
the actions of men. 

What my opponent rejected in the opening of his 
argument, I now bring to his aid to establish the 
truth of the Christian system and the divinity of its 



126 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

founder. And if this will not do, then the verdict will 
be for defendants. 

1st. As to the precepts, rules of action, and doctrines 
of Christ. 

2d. Their identity with what can be deduced from 
the law of nature, and attributes of God. 

3d. The testimony of living witnesses that the pro- 
mises of Christ are verified in their own souls. 

This will add to the credibility of the Dr.'s messen- 
gers. But we must have some standard by which to 
judge. God is a spirit, whose attributes are space, 
including caloric, life, intelligence, will, motion, power, 
goodness, justice, mercy, and truth. 

Now, what kind of a revelation would such a being 
as here described be likely to make to mankind, if one 
were necessary, so as to increase man's happiness here 
and hereafter ? I answer, 

1st. Just such a one as Christ commands and re- 
quires. 

" A new commandment I give unto you, that ye 
love one another." This commandment, however, might 
be given by a mere man. But suppose the whole 
world were Christians, and this new commandment 
obeyed. Would there not be a heaven on earth? 
When all hatred, envy, and malice would be banished 
from among men, and love reign triumphant. He that 
loves another will not injure him, but as to soul and 
body, do him all the good he can ; and what he will do 
to one, he will do to ail, and all to all. No man 
would call anything his own, but all would be at the 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 127 

service of his fellow-man. All things would be in com- 
mon, as among the first Christians. There would be 
no rich, no poor. No poor-houses or jails. All would 
be cared for under this commandment of love, there 
would be one community of feeling among men. 

Do professing Christians obey this commandment ? 
They do not. They are selfish, money-loving, world- 
loving. The very laws are founded on selfishness. He 
that does not obey this commandment, does not believe 
in the divinity of Christ, nor in his mission. They 
are mere pretenders to Christianity. It is the very 
commandment of all others that will make man happy. 
Erom the pleasure and pain received through man's 
nervous system, he is admonished to be kind to his 
fellow-beings. This commandment is Nature's sacred 
law, opposed by the passions of men. 

" Tho strength man gains is from the embrace he gives." 

2d- This commandment, too, is in strict conformity 
to every attribute in God's being, and is designed for 
the happiness of man. It is the Novem Organum in 
morals and religion. There was not the slightest per- 
sonal interest in the command to love one another, it 
being designed for the happiness of the whole human 
family, as a Christian people. 

This command, also, embraces the whole decalogue. 
It completely covers the ten commandments, and if 
obeyed men would need no other for the government 
of their actions in this world. It embraces mercy and 
benevolence, charity, all the virtues. There would be 



128 

no theft, no adultery, no murder, no covetousness, no 
fighting, no wars. All selfishness would be done 
away, and love only would glow in every bosom to 
God and man. All nations would be as one people, 
" If you keep my commandments you shall abide in 
my love, as I have kept my Father's commandments 
and do abide in his love." 

I am aware that there are some interpolations in 
the New Testament, and some things said by the 
writers, for which Christ is not responsible, some of 
which I will hereafter name, but they cannot militate 
against that commandment of love. 

Now, then, is man of himself able, under the con- 
stitution he possesses, and the contending passions by 
which he is influenced, from natural reason alone, to 
obey this commandment and carry it out in practical 
life? 

I answer, that he is not ; although his reason can 
govern his passions in most other matters. 

1st. If he could have done so, there would have been 
no necessity for the advent of Christ. 

2d. Man's reason has never been able to govern his 
ruling passion of self-love, so as to enable him to love 
his neighbor as himself; meaning by neighbor, not 
only he that does him good, but, in the catholic sense r 
all mankind. 

3d. In the history of Christianity we have a posi- 
tive proof that this commandment, to love one another , 
has not been practically carried out in the church, for 
eighteen hundred years, 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 129 

" There have been a few, however, in every age, who 
by the grace of God, and faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ, have been able to ' make their robes white in 
the blood of the Lamb,' who taketh away the sins of 
all those that truly believe in him and obey his com- 
mandments.'- These few would, if they could, no 
doubt, make all things common among men, from the 
influence of the love God shed abroad in their hearts. 
Those few in every age have loved one another, with 
all mankind, and are the salt of the earth. But the 
whole of this is the result of faith. 

" Ye believe in God, believe also in me. By grace 
(meaning favor) ye are saved." u My Father shall 
give you another Comforter, the Holy Ghost. In that 
day you shall know that I am in the Father, you in 
me, and I in you." 

There have been in the church of Christ, in every 
age, and still exist, abundance of living witnesses that 
the other Comforter, the paraclete, or Holy Ghost, 
has according to the promise of Christ, on the evidence 
of the messengers, been received by them. The Spirit 
of truth bearing witness with their souls that they are 
the children of God. This truth they are ready to 
die for ; yet this self-sacrifice would only prove their 
faith, not the truth of the thing. Yet, they have ar- 
rived at, and experience true happiness ! Who wants 
more evidence ? Witness the happiness of the Sisters 
of Charity, and others of the Christian faith. 

Now, for the sake of argument, I will not admit as 
legitimate evidence of the truth of Christianity, any 



130 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

of the asserted miracles of Jesus, however true, on 
the ground that they are set forth by interested wri- 
ters, men who wished others to believe as divinely 
true, what they wrote ; but I will admit the positive 
testimony of those now living, who assert that they are 
truly happy, and know by feeling the love of God and 
of each other in their hearts, that their sins have been 
pardoned, as verification of the words of Christ, and 
that the promised paraclete, or Comforter, has actually 
come ! I will admit the testimony of men who once 
loved to indulge in their worst passions, whose affec- 
tions and aspirations, through faith in Christ, and the 
aid of his Holy Spirit, have been changed, and are 
according to Christ's word, born again. And if this 
fail, there is then no reliable evidence of either his 
divinity or existence. 

But that the world generally, is at present, or has 
been for ages past, Christian, in anything more than 
name, I wholly deny. 

Christianity will never cover the earth, until the 
commandments of its Founder are implicitly, fully 
obeyed. Professors of Christianity, generally, are 
only lying to the Holy G-host, and must expect their 
reward. They partake of the sacrament on Sunday, 
indulge in pride, vain-glory, lie, cheat, and oppress the 
poor, the rest of the week ! They do not love one 
another. 

' c Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such 
is the kingdom of heaven." Meaning honesty, inof- 
fensiveness, and purity, for it is again said, " Be wise 






AND HEAVEN GAINED. 131 

as serpents, and harmless as doves." Humility is the 
foundation of piety, for it opens the way for faith in 
Christ, and love to God and man. 

But Christ has not only given precepts and com- 
mandments for Christian conduct, but he has given 
examples which conflict with the ruling passions of 
men. The messengers have it down so. " My king- 
dom is not of this world, else my servants would fight." 
He set the example of the greatest humility ; even to the 
washing of his disciples 7 feet. Went about doing good. 
Accumulated none of the treasures of this fleeting 
world. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief. When he was buffeted and reviled, he was 
dumb, he reviled not again. He had all the feelings 
and affections of a man, with all the power of the God- 
head, if the gospels be true ; he agonized in the gar- 
den, and wept at the death of his friend. 

In him there has been a new creation, but his off- 
spring are spiritually born, and spiritually nourished 
in the Eucharist, for he had no earthly issue. Christ 
has, therefore, on this evidence and no other, a king- 
dom on this earth. 



THE LORD'S PRAYER. 

Our Father dear, who art in heav'n, 
To whom all glory should be given, 

Hallowed be thy Name ! 
! let thy glorious Kingdom come ; 
And may thy gracious will be done, 

In earth and heav'n the same. 



132 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Give us this day our daily bread, 
That we may in thy statutes tread. 

And be our debts forgiven ; 
As we forgive our fellow-men 
The debts that we might claim of them ; 

And guide us safe to heav'n. 

Let not temptation set a snare 
That we can't overcome by prayer : 

From evil make us free — 
The Kingdom, Power, and Glory, then, 
Be thine — for which we say, Amen, 

And give our souls to Thee !* 




But it may be asked, Why should Jesus be any 
more the Son of God, than Adam ; for Adam was 
made by God, who infused into him the breath of 
life, which was a part of God's holy Spirit. 

I answer, that Adam was made with all the facul- 
ties and passions which the natural man now possess, 
with reason alone to govern him. 

But in process of time, according to the text, it has 
pleased the Almighty to take to himself man's human- 
ity, that he might have a more refined spiritual and 
holy issue in this world, for some wise end that man 
cannot fully comprehend. Your messengers, Doctor ! 

God is ever in action ! The things in nature are 
ever changing, from tne blade of grass upwards. Why 

* The above version of the Lord's Prayer is most respect- 
fully dedicated, by the Author, to the Sisters of Charity, of 
°U creeds, all over the world. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 133 

did God not make man on this earth a million of years 
ago, instead of five or six thousand years ? Geology 
shows that man is of but recent origin here. There 
has been a progress in the moral, religious, and physical 
condition of mankind from the savage to his present 
state. Man must not imagine that he, or the crea- 
tures on this globe, are the only ones which God has 
created and has under his immediate control. Sen- 
tient, intelligent beings, have no doubt worshipped 
God on globes in infinite space, from the remotest 
past, eternity ! and will forever do so while God lives, 
worlds without end. 



THE CREATION. 

LINES WRITTEN AT MIDNIGHT, BY THE AUTHOR, AFTER VIEW- 
ING THE MILKY WAY. 

When naught existed but that great First Cause, 
Which gave the heav'nly orbs their various laws, 
When silence reign'd in one eternal sleep, 
And darkness brooded o'er the mighty deep ; 
When ancient night, throughout eternal space, 
Had left not e'en to heav'n a dwelling place — 
The mighty God then said, " Let there be light" 
To end the reign of this eternal night ; 
Let brilliant Suns throughout the void appear, 
Their places take, all other worlds to cheer ; 
Let mighty Globes, now, every sun go round, 
And Moons, as servants, move in space profound, 
Let Spirits be, who had no place before, 
And with intelligence, their God adore ! 



134 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Oh ! could created being now but view 
With Godlike eye, the awful darkness through : . 
A nucleus see, just formed for ev'ry sun, 
And liquid fire to ev'ry centre run ; 
With lightnings fierce, which flash'd from pole to pole, 
And with one glance could comprehend the whole, 
What mighty angel could one moment gaze 
Without destruction, from the awful blaze ! 

But Order came, and ev'ry world then found 
An orbit true, to make its heav'nly round. 
System round system runs its rapid race 
And orb round orb, throughout ethereal space, 
With sentient beings to ev'ry world given, 
In countless numbers through the boundless heav'n ; 
To sing the praise of Him whose pow'r, from night 
Dispelled the gloom, and gave this glorious light ; 
Of Him, whose Goodness, Wisdom, knows no bound, 
As prov'd, in full, by million worlds around ; 
Of Him, who condescended in his plan, 
To stoop to Earth, and form the creature man ; 
Whose Spirit shines in man's, as now you see, 
Its inspiration giving light to me. 
As in a falling tear the sun doth shine, 
His Spirit, favor'd man, doth dwell in thine ; — 
Then unto Him, let sentient being raise 
An endless song of glory, power, and praise ! 



Man should be very humble. This earth is but a 
small garden in the dominion of God. Man makes 
but a small part of the family of intelligent beings in 
God's dominion ! 

Again. The book of Psalms is a beautiful system 



AND HEAVEN GAINED 135 

of religious worship. Ecclesiastes and the Canticles 
of Solomon, are a set of wise sayings and good practi- 
cal maxims, and the book of Job, a most excellent ex- 
emplification of patience, long-suffering and integrity , 
but all the good things written in the Old Testament, 
don't make the Mosaic miracles, nor his account of 
the creation true, as to the time God took to make the 
world, or the mode in which it is said he took to make 
man. 

Neither can I admit that everything written of 
Christ and his sayings, in the New Testament, is true, 
that does not agree with the character of a divinity. 
If they were, I should reject his assumed divinity, and 
place him with Moses as a mere man. It is quite easy 
to see that the current doctrines of Judaism are pro- 
minent throughout the New Testament, blended with 
some of the Socratic or Platonic philosophy, as well 
as with the retiring transcendental dogmas of the 
stoics. Indeed, the philosophy of Plato, in after times, 
was attempted to be infused into the Christian church. 

The attempts in the New Testament to prove the 
promise of a Saviour and the coming of Christ, from 
the prophets, are wholly Judaistic, and throw in the 
minds of many, a strong doubt of the truth of Christ's 
advent. 

The sayings of the prophets have mostly double 
meanings, but the writers of the New Testament have 
endeavored to make them suit their purpose, so that 
according to the strict rules of evidence neither can be 
admitted as legitimate proofs of the truth of Chris- 



136 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

tianity. Eternal punishment is not asserted in the 
Old or proved in the New Testament. Its truth, as 
before noticed, must be founded alone on Christ's new 
commandments and promises, as can be testified to by 
living witnesses, in the consolations resulting from 
their faith and obedience to the will of Christ. 

Who can say how many alterations or interpolations 
were made in early times in the original text ? There 
is one on the Trinity, inserted by some monk, " There 
are three that bear witness in heaven." It is written 
that Christ commanded his disciples to " love one 
another" and that he again says, " Love your ene- 
mies, do good to them that hate you and calumniate 
you. For if you love them that love you, what reward 
shall you have ? Do not even the publicans this ?" 
According to this, Christ abolishes the reward for 
loving one another, and places it on loving your ene- 
mies. Your messengers must have misunderstood the 
Saviour, Doctor. But this is not in human nature. 
The passions of man oppose it. Man cannot do it un- 
less restrained by the power and influence of the Spirit 
of G-od, in the renewal of his heart, affections, and as- 
pirations, and in resigning all love of this world. 
According to this there are but few real Christians on 
earth, and those are chosen by Christ, and the rest of 
mankind left to rot. Small chance this for the future 
happiness of the great mass of mankind, including 
merchants, lawyers, and professing ministers of the 
Gospel, who will flee from their flocks, if their weekly 
or yearly wages be stopped. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 137 

It is nonsense to say that Christ died for the sins 
of the whole world, while he well knew, if Deity, not 
only the number, but the very persons that he would 
" compel to come in to his feast." 

The man that cannot come in without restraining 
influence to compel him to come in, cannot in justice 
be responsible for his remaining outside. His destiny 
was to be " among the goats." It is useless to say 
that Christ " lighteneth every man that cometh into 
the world," for the enlightenment will not enable him 
to overcome his love of self and the world. He must 
be compelled to come in according to the doctrines set 
forth by those who wrote some part of the New Tes- 
tament. If so, man has no freedom of will whatever, 
and is not accountable. I therefore conclude that 
Christ is not accountable for the writings of all his 
advocates. 

They represent him as holding out a great feast of 
happiness to mankind, while at the same time he is 
determined that only a certain chosen few shall enjoy 
it. This is mockery, and not consistent with any one 
attribute of the Supreme Being. It therefore cannot 
be true. God offers no false hopes to any man. 

Again. In the comparison which Christ is repre- 
sented to have made in regard to the resurrection of 
the body, he says that if the seed put into the earth 
die not, the new plant will not spring forth. Now, 
this could not have been said by Christ, as a divine 
person, for it is not true. Every botanist, horticul- 
turist, and agriculturist, well knows that if the seed 



138 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

dies in the ground, it will never spring forth. It is 
lost forever. The comparison, then, was written by a 
mere man (your messengers were not inspired, Doctor,) 
who did not understand vegetable physiology or the 
growth of plants. An all-wise God will give to man 
nothing but truth, on any subject, when he under- 
takes a revelation. I then repeat that there is no legi- 
timate evidence of the truth of Christianity beyond 
the living witnesses who have testified, and who are 
ready to testify that they have received in their souls 
the Comforter, or paraclete, which Christ promised 
should come, and that they have obtained that happi- 
ness which they sought. 

Some may reply, that the testimony which I offer can- 
not be good, because one of the greatest evils connected 
with any form of worship, is the illiberal, bigoted, per- 
secuting spirit of its professors. This spirit of intol- 
erance, he will say, has shown itself among such in 
every age and country of the world. The Jews set 
themselves up as the only and peculiar people of God. 
They deemed it no crime or sin to slay any man out 
of their faith. "Witness the prophet Samuel and the 
king of the Amalekites, when as a prisoner of war the 
holy Samuel hewed down without the slightest mercy, 
which is but one case among many. But in the long 
run, the presumption, insolence, and arrogance of the 
Jews, provoked the anger and resentment of other 
nations to destroy them and tbeir city, a. d. 70. 

The bigoted spirit of Paganism, which was rampant in 
the time of Socrates, and by which that great moral re- 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 139 

former lost his life, b. c. 400, was in its tarn crushed, 
annihilated by the Christian religion. 

In the Christian Church, after the violent conflict 
between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople for 
the ascendency of Episcopal power, in which the great 
metropolis of Rome bore the sway in the West, the 
spirit of exclusiveness, intolerance, and bigotry which 
reigned, was, together with the Peter Pence, the chief 
cause of the Reformation. The seed having been 
sown. 

This arrogant presumption of any sect or people to 
be the chosen of God, has ever been, and ever will be 
put down, by the progress of knowledge, and justice 
of God, in his providence over the whole human 
family. 

But I answer, that when all men act under the law 
of love, there will be none to oppose. 

When the Spirit of Christ, which is love, shall reign ; 
when mercy, to all animals, shall guide every heart ; 
when every soul shall feel happy in his faith and prac- 
tice under the law of love; then, and not till then, 
may professing Christians say and think that they be- 
long to the fold of Christ, and are in the way to 
heaven. 

Until all men on earth shall love each and all as 
themselves, the true Spirit of Christ as set forth in the 
New Testament, by the witnesses thereof, will not gov- 
ern mankind. Until the laws of men are so modified 
that everything shall be enjoyed in common, true 



140 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Christianity, as intended by its Founder, or his wit- 
nesses, will not be universal in the world. 

It is useless for the man with his one, five, or ten 
millions, to attempt heaveD until he divides it among 
his suffering fellow-men, for Christ has fixed his fate. 
A camel cannot go through the eye of a needle. 
No quibbling can get rid of this. This is the mission 
of Christ, which is either true or not true. If it be 
of a man such as Moses, reject it as nonsense, as is 
now practically done : but if it be of God, carry it 
out in full. 

Again. Mahomet set himself up as a prophet of 
God, and his followers look on Christians, and all other 
unbelievers in his mission, as dogs. They, too, will 
be destroyed, together with those professing Christians 
who will not accept the law of love. 

Now, as to Christ's example of humility. He 
washed his disciples' feet. Do professing Christians 
do this? Christ wore a crown of thorns, but His 
Holiness, the Pope, wears a triple crown of gold. He 
is an earthly king, whose kingdom is of this world, 
mocking in his pride, the humility of the Saviour ! 
Did Christ wear gold chains round his neck, costly 
rings of gold and diamonds on his fingers, rich apparel 
on his person, and a splendid mitre on his head ? 
Why don't his followers wear crowns of thorns ? Did 
he live sumptuously every day, on an income of from 
ten thousand to one hundred thousand dollars per 
annum, wrung out of the sweat of the poor, as Chris- 
tian bishops do ? 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 141 

These men professing Christianity, do not believe 
in the Divinity of Christ, or they would obey his com- 
mands and divide the spoils with their fellow-men. 
They follow Christ for the loaves and fishes. 

" A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love 
one another" 

A well-disposed father loves his children, and 
divides all he has freely among them, yet the children 
being influenced by the common selfishness of the 
world, are not as well disposed to divide equally among 
themselves. Just so the Father of all has given this 
beautiful world and all therein, to be enjoyed equally 
by all men; but force, fraud, and injustice, come in 
and monopolize the lion's share. 

This command of Christ, then, is one of the strong- 
est proofs of the divinity of his mission, as it fully 
agrees with the benevolent intention of God in spread- 
ing out this earth for the equal benefit of all, as the 
common Father who loves his children, the whole fam- 
ily of mankind. 

But, I am quite aware that objections like the fol- 
lowing, will be made to the commandment of love, by 
which I hold true Christians should be bound : 

" It is impossible for mankind to obey such a com- 
mandment, as it would destroy all progress among men 
in the world. (Most Catholic countries, even without 
this law, are 500 years behind the age.) Men would 
raise just as much from the earth as would supply 
their wants, and manufacture just enough to cover 
their persons. All emulation in business would be 



142 

destroyed. No inventions or improvements in the 
trades or the arts would be needed, or encouraged. 
No advancement in literature or science. We should 
need no newspapers to read actions, as all would be 
alike. Fine houses and fine cities would not be 
erected. Silks and satins, gold or silver, and all orna- 
ments made of them, would be of no use whatever, 
and he that should wear them would not be deemed a 
Christian. Man would be ever doing for, and aiming 
at the other world, and, like Socrates, neglecting 
this. Ships might rot at the docks, and as bad as the 
matter is now, under the reign of kings, democracies, 
and despots, of popes, bishops, and priests, it would 
then be ten times worse. Nothing of this kind can 
ever happen until man has lost his reason, and the in- 
centives to action inherent in his nature. Your com- 
mandment of love would take mankind back to the 
savage state from whence he came. 

Away with it then, for it calls on us not only to 
love our friends, but our enemies. It is but a Pla- 
tonic abstraction, (some will say) that can never be 
acted on in this world, and this proves that Jesus 
Christ has no more divinity in him than Socrates or 
Moses, because he has called on man to perform a 
moral impossibility, or absurdity?' 1 And they further 
say that the pretended Christian happiness is but a 
fanatical whim. 

But, I answer, what has all the past splendors of 
this world come to'? Where are all the merchants, 
bankers, financiers, nobles, kings, queens, ancient 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 143 

cities and even empires ? Where are the eighty thou- 
sand millions of human beings that have lived on this 
globe, within the last 6000 revolutions of the earth 
round the sun ? What avails all their wealth, honors, 
and pleasures ? Alas ! they have fallen by the scythe 
of time ! Their earthly struggle is past, and their 
bodies are now in the air, in the shape of gases or 
caloric, or the element which composed the other 
beings. If happiness of any kind be attainable, may 
the Father of all impress on man's soul that for which 
we all aim. 



Oh, Death ! thou great proprietor of all, 
To thee, the high, the low, the mighty fall ; 
You tread out empires, desolate in wars, 
You'll quench the sun, annihilate the stars ! 
Then why should man complain, or why should 1 1 
Since God decrees that Nature all must die. 



MARY, THE MOTHER OF JESUS, NOW CALLED THE 
IMMACULATE VIRGIN. 

After about 1854 years, it is discovered and an- 
nounced as a dogma of the Church of Rome, by Pope 
Pius IX., that the Virgin Mary is, or rather was, 
when in the flesh, Immaculate, that is, spotless, pure, 
undefiled, having been tainted with no original sin 
from the fall of our first parents, as described by 
Moses. 

Now, Mary, in her day and generation, had not 



144 

only Jesus born unto her, but at least two other boys, 
as will be seen in the 1st chapter of Acts, 14th verse, 
and how many more I do not recollect. 

According to this, then, the other children had by 
Joseph, the carpenter, who was not immaculate, must 
have been half -immaculate, and not only so, but they 
were half-brothers to God, if, as the Catholics say and 
believe, that the Virgin Mary was and is " the mother 
of God !" For, according to Axiom 1 1, of this work, 
the elements of all things that exist, partake of the 
nature of the source from which they sprung. 

I should like to know how far this purity in the 
half-brothers of Jesus could be traced until it wore 
out ? 

This is also from the testimony of one of the messen- 
gers who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, Luke. 

When a Pope, in 1854, undertakes to manufacture 
new doctrines in the Christian religion, and who 
thereby is a much better messenger to the present 
generation than any of the writers of the New Testa- 
ment, who are Dr. Chalmers' messengers, it is not to 
be wondered at that manufactures were made 1855 
years ago, by other interested persons, to establish the 
divine origin of their creeds. I therefore hold that no 
special divine revelation has ever been made to man- 
kind on the subject of religion, or on any other sub- 
ject in the two great branches of Natural knowledge, 
History, and Science. God never reveals a falsehood 
such as I have shown in the messengers. The Church 
of Rome itself, offers no other evidence of the truth 



A.ND HEAVEN GAINED. 145 

of Christianity than her traditions, which in a court 
of law, in this country, would not be received by any 
intelligent judge, as legitimate evidence of the fact. 
A monk, it is said, edited the manuscript (printed) 
edition of the Greek Testament, no doubt amended to 
suit his peculiar notions of the subject. 

Again, according to your messengers, Mary well 
knew that she was with child by the Almighty, and 
yet she, the immaculate, descended from her high 
estate to have other issue by a mere man, Joseph, the 
carpenter ! This, according to our notions of virtue 
and purity, although married, does not give the most 
exalted impression of Mary's self-respect or self-denial. 
I make these remarks as suggestions, with great rev- 
erence to the Supreme Being, as well as to Jesus, and 
to the feelings of those who fully believe in his divin- 
ity 5 laying all the blame, however, to the messengers 
(as well as the Pope) of my very erudite opponent, 
Dr. Chalmers. 

The Oak she lost, and then the Bramble took, 
'Tis so recorded in that most holy book ; 
The Bride of God ! weak woman ! then she ran 
With open arms to be the Spouse of man I 

The messengers (writers of the New Testament,) 
say, that Jesus was begotten, but not like Adam, made; 
of course Adam is only the creature of God, whereas 
they assert of Jesus, that he is the Divinity himself 
by whom all things were made ! 

There is a striking likeness between Socrates and 



146 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Jesus, as to the mode of announcing their respective 
systems of ethics and religion, in the fact, that neither 
of them, it appears, ever left anything behind him in 
writing. Excepting that Socrates, it is said, versified 
one of the fables of iEsop, as recorded in either Plato 
or Xenophon, his two great pupils, who have never 
noticed one another. 

But, as to Jesus, whether he ever preached or not, 
there was much room left for enthusiasm and embel- 
lishment by those messengers of my opponent, in an- 
nouncing his advent into the world, with a view to 
establish a new religion on the ruins of the Jewish 
temple, and the scattering of the Jews into all nations, 
which by means of the Emperor Titus, who carried 
30,000 Jews captive into Rome, took place about that 
time. 

It is said that the Island of Patmos, Doctor, had 
no doubt something to do with the writing of the New 
Testament, and if so, your messengers will be reduced 
to one, and he was John, the writer of the book of 
Revelations. I think I have a right to my opinion, 
Dr. Chalmers, as well as yourself. The writer, how- 
ever, has not done justice to his hero, for he has made 
him say things that he never would have said, if he was 
the author of, and knew all things. 

God never announced a falsehood to mankind. 
And if Jesus was the Son of God and the Saviour of 
the world, as claimed by the messengers, possessing 
the humanity of man and the divinity of God, he is 
not at all responsible for the errors of those who gave 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 147 

his history and mission to mankind, no more than 
Socrates is responsible for what his pupils, Plato or 
Xenophon, have written of that great moralist 

From the nature of man, to make him comparatively 
happy, he must ever have in this world some form of 
religion on which to rest his hopes of bliss, or to 
restrain him from violating the laws of God and of his 
nature. 

If left to the great mass of mankind, they never 
would have been able to discover by natural reason 
the will of God ; he therefore, no doubt, has chosen 
and qualified, intellectually, certain men, to search out 
from nature and reason, the best rules of conduct for 
the happiness of the human family, as they have 
searched out the secrets of science, and given them to 
the world; and of all these systems, Christianity is 
undoubtedly the best, notwithstanding the errors of 
my opponent's messengers. But to give it authority 
over the conduct of men, by inspiring them with hope 
and unity, messengers superadded to its Founders 
authority, the sanction of divinity. 

ANANIAS AND SAPHIRA. 

Now, Doctor, Saint Luke, who wrote one of the 
G-ospels and the Acts of the Apostles, was another of 
your truthful messengers. Take his 5th chapter of 
Acts, where he states that Ananias and Saphira his 
wife, sold a piece of land, with the view of giving it to 
the Church, but it appears that they reserved a part 



148 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

of it which, as the owners of the property, it is admit* 
ted by St. Peter, they had an undoubted right to do ; 
yet Peter it appears, relying on the simplicity of his 
dupes, in their faith of Peter's mission, interrogated 
Ananias as regards the amount paid to the Church, and 
in reference to the whole amount paid for the land, 
and charging him with having lied to the Holy Ghost, 
by the force of conscience caused his instant death ! 
But Saphira, appearing before Peter, and not knowing 
what had happened to her husband, was charged by 
him with the same lie, which caused, by the force of 
conscience, her instant death also. 

If this had happened in our time, Peter would have 
been indicted and tried for man-slaughter, in having 
been the immediate cause of Saphira's death, as he 
must have intended to kill her — which killing was just 
as bad as though he had stabbed her, as the quo animo 
was there. 

This sets a terrific example to the dupes who may 
refuse to give either part or the whole of their estates 
to St. Peter, cardinals, bishops, or monks, as well as 
to the extremely pious and unambitious Archbishop 
t John Hughes, who at this moment, it is said, holds 
more than $2,000,000 of such property ! 

Now, if St. Luke has told the truth, St. Peter must 
have been in heart a monster, almost as cruel as Moses, 
who destroyed 23,000 unbelieving Jews, over twenty 
years of age, that he might establish his pretended 
special revelation from God to him ! 

The statute of mort-main put a stop to much of this 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 14S 

business of robbing heirs, by giving their property to 
churches or such corporations, but the last Legislature 
of the State of New York, has clenched the rivet, and 
placed the church property where it ought to be, as 
far as the people of that State are concerned. Go, do 
so likewise all over the earth. 

Luke is tainted, then where is the testimony of the 
other three witnesses on the same side ? 

Now, that St. Luke has lied in this matter, is 
quite clear, unless Peter fled from justice as Moses 
did from Egppt, from the authority of Roman 
sway ; for the civil law of Rome was in full force 
in Judea at that time, and Peter could not have 
escaped conviction, for that matter was not done if 
done at all, in a corner, nor could have escaped the 
attention of the authorities. This, my dear Doctor 
Chalmers, is one of your messengers, who wrote the 
" Gospel according to St. Luke," and who corrobor- 
ates the other three Gospels, written by Matthew, 
Mark, and John. How would such a witness be re- 
ceived in our courts of law ? But you feared to ex- 
amine your own witnesses, and have left that to me. 

According to the Douay version of the New Testa- 
ment, the Acts of the Apostles were written by Luke, 
if he were the author, about the year a. d. 63 ; it was 
quite natural, therefore, to write such a story as that 
of Ananias and Saphira, to get property into the church. 
And this is no doubt the whole object of the story. 



150 HELL DEMOLISHED, 



Matthew's testimony. 



If Matthew's statement, in his 4th chapter, be true, 
Jesus fasted forty days and nights. But no mere man 
could do this short of the penalty of death. Matthew, 
then, in this chapter, alone indicates that Jesus was, 
as the Catholics say, and as is stated through the Gos- 
pel of St. John, the very God. The devil, then, in a 
second temptation, set him on " a pinnacle of the 
temple," and told him to cast himself down, to show 
that he was the Son of God! Now, think of the eter- 
nal God, who held all power in his hands, to be hawked 
about in such a manner as this, by an evil spirit like 
the Devil, should there be such a spirit ! But Jesus, 
like Socrates, wrote nothing. Did Matthew see the 
Devil take him up to the top of the pinnacle of the 
temple ? This question is for you, Dr. Chalmers, since 
you left the credibility and examination of your mes- 
sengers to me. Matthew, it is said, wrote his Gospel 
in Hebrew, or in Syro-Chaldaic, which the Jews of 
Palestine spoke at that time. The Devil must have 
whipped Jesus up, and put him on the pinnacle in a 
moment. Who told Matthew this story ? I certainly 
cannot lay such a story to Christ, " the Saviour of 



men." 



Again. Matthew (or Levi as he is called by Luke,) 
in his 8th chapter, states, among other matters, that 
Jesus, who is God, drove the devils out of two 
men, and at their request, that is, the request of the 
devils, suffered them to enter into a herd of swine ! 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 151 

Thus Grod himself complying with the request of 
devils ! But the Jewish law forbids the eating of park, 
and Matthew, or whoever wrote in his name, must 
have been a very Jew, deeming swine fit for nothing 
but devils. Pray, Dr. Chalmers, what use did the 
Jews make of swine in those days, in Palestine ? Had 
they any negro slaves to feed on them ? It is quite 
evident that Matthew had great faith in the credulity 
of mankind, which he no doubt learned in the collec- 
tion of taxes, if he were ever in that occupation. 
Neither can we lay this silly tale to the " Saviour of 
men." 

The Supreme Being made swine, as well as other 
animals ; it is, therefore, not very likely that he would 
make them the receptacle of devils, if such spirits 
exist. The other stories of Matthew stand on the 
same foundation, as regards any strength in his testi- 
mony. 

In Matthew, chapter 14, it is stated that Christ re- 
commends the " making of one's-self a eunuch for the 
kingdom of heaven's sake !" It will be recollected 
that according to Moses, Grod made man in his own 
likeness, which means likely perfection as a creature, 
with the organs and power of pro-creation and repro- 
duction, and ordered him to be fruitful, multiply, and 
replenish the earth ; but, according to Matthew, Christ 
tells him that he had better geld himself for the king- 
dom of heaven's sake ! Suppose all men were to do 
ao, the design of God would be frustrated. 

Now, Doctor, which of these two messengers are we 



152 HELL DEMOLISHED. 

to believe ? As to myself, in this matter, I am m 
favor of the doctrine of Moses, as it comes nearer to 
the law of nature or nature's God. T take the literal 
sense of the words as they are. If this passage in 
Matthew J)e true, all Catholic priests should be set 
apart for the ministry in the 8th day after birth, by 
depriving the infant of the scrotum and its contents, to 
prevent such awful temptations in future life. This, 
then, is according to one of your messengers, Doctor, 
not according to Christ's benevolent design. 

Again. Matthew says, in the same chapter, that we 
must leave all our riches and follow Christ. "What 
then will become of the riches ? Why, of course they 
must fall to the state. No, not at all ; they must fall 
to the church — -for this is not only the Catholic, but 
Mormon doctrine and practice. 

It is quite certain that the book of Matthew was 
written many years after the destruction of Jerusalem, 
and the history of the time, many years before its 
destruction by Titus, the son of Vespasian, written by 
the celebrated Josephus, and published some short 
time after that period, is wholly silent on that subject, 
there not being one line in it about Christ or Chris- 
tians. If the testimony of your messengers, my dear 
Doctor Chalmers, were deemed enough to establish 
the fact that Jesus Christ ever did live an this earth, 
the monks or leaders of the sect in the first ages of 
Christianity would never have interpolated a lie, as 
they have done in that author's well written work. 

Why should the Jews be so terribly proscribed by 






AND HEAVEN GAINED. 153 

the Christians for killing Jesus Christ, while at the 
same time, according to their notions, no man could be 
saved or go to heaven, had he not laid down his life 
for the world ? 

Wonder if the inhabitants of the planet Jupiter re- 
quired a Saviour ? Perhaps, they are immaculate ? 



LINES. 

WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR ON VIEWING JUPITER AND HIS 

SATELLITES. 

That twinkling star, which now adorns the night. 
In heaven's blue vault, seems but a fainter gleam 
Of thy effulgence, Ruler of all worlds ! 
But when we point the glass and catch its phaze, 
A pond'rous globe, like this our earth, appears ! 
With all variety of light and shade, 
By hills and dales, and sylvan waters strew'd, 
Unfolding wonders to our ravished eyes ! 

Then mute we stand ! while music of the spheres 
Enchants to ecstacy the raptur'd soul ! 
We catch the strain, as from angelic hosts. 
It comes, — and bow'd to heav'n, the God adore ! 

Who would not gaze on yonder glorious sight, 
To gain such inspiration from high heav'n ; 

Who would not soar by that pure sid'ral light, 
To view the wonders which are nightly given ? 



154 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Who would not draw his knowledge from above, 
Wh^re all is "Wisdom, Mercy, Power, and Love 1 

"Who loves Astronomy was born to rise, 
For such a soul is kindred to the skies. 



The same matters are treated of pretty much in 
the same style by the four Evangelists, Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John, who are the principal wit' 
nesses, or messengers, of my very learned opponent, 
Doctor Chalmers. 

In the 11th chapter of Mark, it is stated, that 
Christ, who is God, according to Christian doctrine, 
cursed a fig-tree, because it did not bear fruit, and 
which as is there stated, was at a time of the year 
when u no man expected any fruit from such a tree !" 
It is said that Jesus saw the tree afar off, having 
leaves, " he came, if perhaps he might find any fruit 
on it !" He then cursed it ! Oh, Mark, what an ass 
you have been. A God not to know, before he exam- 
ined the tree, whether it had fruit on it or not ! 

Now, we cannot charge the all-wise God, as Jesus 
iieved to be, with such an act of injustice and 
folly, as here set forth by one of Doctor Chalmers' 
messengers. Here the Doctor looked daggers. 

If a witness be tainted in one instance, he is re- 
jected in all by human courts of law or equity. " To 
crowds belief!" No clerical quibbling about exam- 
ples will answer here. Take care of your wages, 
gentlemen. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 155 

In the 14th chapter of Luke, he converts Jesus into 
a Chesterfield, by giving (8th and 9th verses) his dis- 
ciples a lesson on table and wedding etiquette ! Was 
this a part of his mission ? 

The conversion of Paul, in the 9th chapter of Acts, 
is quite equal to any of the spiritual manifestations of 
the present day. Wonder if Paul sold books or 
made them for sale ? But this is one of Luke's stories, 
Dr. Chalmers, and he is tainted. Let down the sheet 
full of all kinds of animals and creeping things of the 
earth, including hedgehogs and swine ! So, by a vision 
seen by Peter, the Jewish law was nullified, and Jews 
and Gentiles may eat of every kind of animal, bird, or 
reptile they may fancy. This is from the Catholic 
Bible. Then why do the Catholic Bishops say 
that all Cemeteries for the burial of the dead must be 
consecrated, to make them fit for the reception of the 
holy bodies of their church members ? The reason is 
this : The bishops and Archbishops (t John) must 
raise a revenue out of the dying and the dead. 

u Give humility a coach and six." 

" The hireling will flee because he is an hireling," no 
matter to what denomination he may belong. The 
monks destroyed the works of Celsus. It is hoped 
that the vitality of this little book will be permitted 
to remain until the eyes of all men are opened with 
the light of knowledge. 

Again. Your messengers, Dr. Chalmers, say, that 



156 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

the Devil took Christ up to an exceeding high moun- 
tain, showed him from then ee all the kingdoms of this 
world, and said to him, (Christ) " all this will I give 
unto thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." 
The Devil must have had some kind of magic lantern 
to turn the earth down side up. But the fact is, that 
your Jewish messengers believed in the astronomy of 
Ptolemy of Egypt, which taught that the earth was an 
extended plain. So your messengers have told you 
all they knew about the matter. They imagined that 
all the kingdoms of the world could be seen from " an 
exceeding high mountain /" Such is the foundation 
of this story. Gfod never reveals a falsehood to any 
man, (Axiom 25,) therefore your messengers were not 
inspired. 

Again. Your messengers have said, that if all that 
Jesus did were written, " even the world itself would 
not hold the books that might be written." The writers 
of the New Testament, who are your messengers, have 
calculated much on the credulity of mankind. What 
a pile of books, bound in Russia, there would be ! 
Theology would in such case be a most profound, ever- 
lasting study. 

Your messengers again tell us that Jesus ratified 
the Jewish story of Jonas in the whale's belly. I 
shall not lay such trumpery to the charge of Christ. 
No man can live three days without drawing his 
breath. Christ never said such a thing. Your mes- 
sengers are tainted, Dr. Chalmers, their testimony ? 
therefore, cannot be received. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 157 

Now, my most erudite opponent, I think that I 
have quoted nearly enough of the absurdities of your 
messenger of the New Testament, yet I shall take 
one more from Luke iv : 5. When he states that the 
Devil took Jesus, that is Gtod, into a high mountain 
and " showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a ' 
moment of time," and the Devil said, " to thee will I 
give all the power and glory of them, for to me they 
are delivered, if thou wilt adore me !" 

If this be so, the Devil must have taken him to 
Mount Blanc, or some high mountain in India, for there 
is no very high mountain in Judea, or near Jerusalem. 

1st. If the mountain was ever so high, the Devil, 
if he were there at all, could not show Jesus or any 
other person all the kingdoms of the world, unless he 
took him to the other side, and showed him North 
and South America, as well as China and the immense 
countries of Asia. From the highest mountain in the 
world the semi-diameter of the circle of vision is not 
more than 100 miles, which would be the sensible 
horizon, and to see the whole rational horizon, which 
is half the globe, was impossible. 

The Devil, if such a bugbear exists, even with a 
magic lantern, could not do what Luke states. 

But Luke, or the writer, believed the earth fixed as 
an extended' plane, which, as before said, was the doc- 
trine of the times, so he thought that the whole plane 
could be seen from a high mountain. (Who has not 
heard of Maw- Worm, or Praisegod Barebones, of 
the Rump Parliament ?) Now, let any man of com- 



158 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

mon sense, whose brains are not enveloped in the wool- 
sack of bigotry and superstition, or, whose bread and 
butter do not depend on his clerical influence over his 
dupes, judge, whether the Almighty Father of univer- 
sal nature and Governor of all worlds, in infinite space, 
which powers are claimed for Jesus, and whom, if so, 
the Devil, according to the text, well knew, would 
need to be shown all the kingdoms of the world, which 
he had himself made with the whole earth ! Or, that 
the Eternal God would suffer a spirit that had, ac- 
cording to Milton and others, rebeled in heaven against 
his power, and for whom he had made Hell, as as- 
serted, to offer such indignity to Him as represented 
by Luke. And all this, notwithstanding its absur- 
dity, is gulped down by the orang-outangs of human 
society as fixed facts and established truths ! Here my 
learned opponent blushed for the first time, whereupon 
I observed that as he, Dr. Chalmers, would not ex- 
amine his own messengers, or witnesses, as I before 
told him, I was compelled to do it. 

We cannot lay to the charge of Jesus these stories 
of Luke, for he, or whoever wrote them, looked 
through the magnifying glass of superstition instead 
of the telescope of truth. 

I have heretofore said that no special revelation was 
ever communicated to man, but that man is just such 
a being as God designed him to be. If Jesus was 
what is claimed for him, God, he needed no special 
Revelation, as he must have known all things, human 
and divine. The end of the Law of Moses is faith 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 159 

in Christ. Then why secure the Old Assassin and 
Arch Magician at all. 

Christianity under the Emperor Constantine became 
the religion of the Roman Empire, a. d. 325. 

It is said by an elegant writer on Ecclesiastical His- 
tory, in comparing the forms of religion among the 
ancients with Christianity, that all the forms of reli- 
gion were equally useful in governing the people, 
although not founded in truth, and to interfere with the 
public prejudices on such points was dangerous, as 
tortures and death generally awaited the man who 
made the attempt. 

The Gnostics, a sect of schismatics, held that Christ 
was incapable of suffering, that he had only the ap- 
pearance of man, and denied his resurrection. There 
can be no doubt that the celibacy of the Roman clergy 
had its origin in the doctrines and practice of the Gnos- 
tics, as well as of the penance which the church im- 
poses on its dupes. 

One of the doctrines of Origen, and the later sect 
of Platonists at Alexandria, was that " the end justi- 
i fies the means." This having been adopted by the 
early Christians, gave rise to those pretended miracles 
and legends, which, in succeeding ages, brought dis- 
grace upon the Christian Church. 

In a. d. 753 the supremacy of the Pope was ac- 
knowledged, and his temporal dominion established. 

The simplicity, beauty and mutual love among the 
early Christians was now wholly changed by gradual 
steps from the Apostolic pattern. 



160 HELL DEMOLISHED. 

The property of the church, contributed by indi- 
viduals, was monopolized by the Chief Bishop or 
Pope. The church could, like an infant, acquire pro- 
perty, but could not lose it. Prescription then sanc- 
tioned was usurpation began, so that bishops grew 
into princes, and Popes into Kings. " The Ecclesias- 
tical Constitution was made to approximate to the 
political ; the rulers of the church corresponded to 
the high officers and Governors of the State ; their 
provinces were of similar extent, and though their 
functions were different their authority was nearly the 
same ; the metropolitan now became a patriarch, and 
in process of time. the patriarch became a Pope ! 

Felix, the' second Pontiff of Rome, summoned the 
Patriach of Constantinople before himself and an 
Italian Council or Synod of Clergy, and degraded him 
from office. Thus the Bishop of Rome got the as- 
cendancy over the Patriarch of Constantinople. 

"About the year a. d. 755 Pepin, King of France, 
made over to the Pope twenty-two cities of Italy, and 
in one part of Europe, at least, the successor of the 
poor and humble Peter reigned uncontrolled, in the* 
exercise of the civil as well as the ecclesiastical power 
and authority, and united in his own person the highest 
offices of King and Priest. In a succeeding age the 
Pope laid claim to infallibility, and in the pros- 
tration of the human understanding and prerogatives 
of apostolical power, he disposed of crowns and gov- 
ernments at his pleasure. " 

But there were some herecies. Arius held that 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 161 

Jesus was but a creature, and was not from all eter- 
nity with God, but that the Father conferred on him 
the effulgence of his glory. Arius was the cause of 
the Council of Nice, 325, which assembled to ascer- 
tain the Catholic doctrine. Two thousand clergy, of 
whom three hundred and eighteen were bishops, met 
in the Emperor's presence. Constantine, Eusebius 
says, exceeded all his attendants in stature and splen- 
dor. 

But I say, in regard to the doctrine of Arius, that 
not only the soul of Jesus Christ, but the element of 
the soul of every man was with God from all eternity. 

Mahomet commenced his career at the beginning of 
the 7th century. He set out with the dogma of Is- 
lamism, u That titer e is one true God, and that Ma- 
homet is his Prophet" 

Moses and Mahomet propagated their respective 
religions in pretty much the same way, viz., by the 
Sword, for those who would not believe were put to 
death. The one with a magic wand and the other 
with a naked sword ; a kind of logic which the Chris- 
tians were allotted by Mahomet, soon found to be 
quite irresistible, so he conquered as he marched on- 
ward, dividing two-fifths of the spoils among his fol- 
lowers. 

That whatever is, is right, and whatever God wills 
must happen, — that God governs all, and men must 
fulfill their destiny, were his doctrines, and thus in 
less than half a century he had the whole of Persia, 
Syria, and Egypt, and a great part of Africa and 



162 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Spain. Mahomet was a handsome, shrewd, intelligent, 
energetic man, and was much truer and quite as hu- 
mane as Moses, the Jew. 

The great sway of the Popes existed from 755 till 
about the time of the Reformation, 1545, during which 
time there was one reign of mental darkness, and men- 
tal as well as physical bondage under its baneful in- 
fluence. Has not these things resulted from the stories 
of your messengers ? God send it where it will never 
return. While the monks appeared poor,the innumera- 
ble monasteries existing in that period were overflow- 
ing with riches, the gifts of kings, princes, dukes, lords, 
and individuals for the pardon of their sins ! This 
power of pardoning being announced by your messen- 
gers, and the relics of saints collected without number. 
Many a time tears have been shed over the bone of 
a hyena or a dog, believing it to have been once the 
bone of some saint, perhaps St. Benet of the Calen- 
dar. 

False miracles, legends and lies, were produced on 
every side. The multitude heard and believed. Many 
a personal combat, it is said, was had with the devil 
in those days ! The Grecian Patriarch, Theoplylact, 
had no less than two thousand horses in his stables, 
fed on pig-nuts and dried grapes, and figs steeped in 
wine. 

This patriarch quit his pulpit on the announcement 
of a servant, that a favorite mare had foaled, ran to the 
stable to see, and then returned and finished the ser- 
vice of high mass. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 163 

They tell a story in Gravesend, Long Island, of a 
minister of that place, who, on hearing it announced 
to his congregation on a Sunday morning, that a large 
quantity of silver dollars was then exposed on Barren 
Island, east of Coney Island, which was the fact, his 
congregation, having arose from their seats for a run, 
the clergyman called them to order, and seizing on his 
hat, said, u My friends, let us all have a fair chance" 
and off they went together. 

This minister, however, could read, but most of 
the Popish Priests of the 12th, 13th and 14th cen- 
turies could not read, but were in general as ignorant 
as their dupes. Has this not all resulted from the 
doctrines of your messengers ? 

Darkness visible reigned triumphant then, 
The Christian faith 1 No, say it not, my pen. 
And if such creeds will make of man an ass, 
Let every man of sense then shun the mass. 
Dethrone the Pope, and set the people free, 
So that the blindest man can plainly see. 
Give education to the common mind, 
As that's the only way to cure the blind. 

It is quite manifest then that the ancient philoso- 
pher of Paganism never did as much harm to mankind 
as Christianity has done under Papal sway, from the 
authority of your messenger. 

In 1076, Peter the Hermit commenced his career, 
and influenced by his eloquence, 700,000 armed to go 
on the celebrated crusade to the holy land. Which 



164 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

crusade, you know, Doctor, formed the subject of the 
celebrated epic poem of Tasso, which ranks with the 
Illiad and Paradise Lost, Homer and Milton. The 
Jesuits, a most insidious order of popery, were sup- 
pressed in 1773, by Clement 14th, yet they were 
Christians. The real presence was first promulgated 
in 1201, which if Christianity be here is not un- 
philosophic. The invention of purgatory brought 
immense wealth into the church, as Catholics feared 
it as much as they did hell itself. 

All classes filled up the church treasury, when every 
thing went in but nothing ever returned to bless the 
poor children of the grantors. 

The following piece of doggrel was written by some 
enemy of the popes. It certainly was not Stern, for it 
does not possess the wit of the celebrated Tristum 
Shandy. The invention, it is said, was made at the 
Council of Tent, 1545, but I think it must have been 
at the Council of Nice. 

THE INVENTION OF PURGATORY. 

" A Pope and his Council once held a debate 
Concerning man's fitness for a future state ; 
To heaven says one no impure thing can enter, 
Another replies then I dare not venture, 
I being a sinner can have no pretention, 
And out of hell sure there is no redemption. 
Then answered his holiness, and that with a smile, 
Give attention to me for some little while, 
And mark what I say, all power to me is given, 
I can freely admit all my friends into heaven, 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 165 

For St. Peter lie left his successor the keys, 

And you know I can open the gates when I please. 

Then replies an old Cardinal, that is but a jest, 

For were the gates open from East unto West, 

Unless I am pure I can then find no rest. 

Then answered his holiness, how can these things be, 

Many Catholics die and from sin are not free, 

If we send them to heaven no place they'll procure. 

And to send them to hell would be cruelty, sure ; 

So how to dispose of them I cannot tell, 

Lest we find out some place between heaven and hell. 

The thing being agreed on, the assembly broke up, 

But now let us mark what happened the Pope, — 

To his bright Earthly Throne he soon bid adieu, 

And set out for heaven without more ado. 

In traversing space heaven's gate he did see, 

But alas ! his successor had got the bright key. 

Then finding no entrance away he did flee, 

In search of the place called purgatory. 

But having no guide 'twas his dismal fate, 

To mistake the right road and arrive at hell's gate ! 

Dear doctor, come in, the Devil then cried, 

I've several more of your sort here inside, 

And you'r welcome here, I assure you, full well, 

For you were my best friend when on earth you did dwell ; 

I tempted the Saviour by my magic power, 

But you, Reverend Sir, did his body devour ; 

Mankind I entice to commit every sin, 

But you give them license to prosper therein, 

By promising pardon to them after death, 

You let them remain in sin while they've breath, 

So in all your proceedings to give you your due, 

You proved unto me right loyal and true, 

And so for your kind dealings, sir, the warmest place, 

In all my dominions I'll grant to your Grace !" 



1 66 HELL DEM0L1 SHED , 

Now, Doctor Chalmers, even if you had established 
the truth of your messengers, or what they attempted 
to make mankind believe, that the Almighty assumed 
the form of man, and as the Son of God, gave up his 
life for the sins of the world, which you have not, it 
can be shown, that Christianity has caused more blood- 
shed and cruelty on earth, under Popish sway, than 
was ever caused by any of the ancient sect of philoso- 
phers or even Moses or Mahomet. 

It is a perfectly logical inference that if Chris- 
tianity was founded by God, he never would have per- 
mitted such monstrous conduct to have been carried 
into practice, under its holy sanction, by its profes- 
sors. Your great original witness, or messenger, 
Moses, I have put on his back, by the light of science, 
and on him the Jeiv who wrote the New Testament, 
for I deem it the composition of one man, has at- 
tempted to prove the necessity of the advent by refer- 
ing to certain obscure prophetic passages in the Old 
Testament, which in fact can be made to mean any 
thing. Your messengers, too, of the New Testament, 
have been placed in the same category, as I have 
clearly shown them to be tainted, and unworthy of 
credit in any court of justice on earth, and much less 
so before the Court of Heaven. 

Those portions, therefore, of the Christian doctrine, 
which are really truths, have been deduced from the 
Laws of Nature, or Nature's God, and have been re- 
vealed or learned like truths in pure science, from ob- 
servation and experiment. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 167 

" The attempts which have been made by eccle- 
siastics, to check the progress of astronomical science, 
we hope are the last efforts of expiring bigotry, and 
we trust the hazardous experiment will never be re- 
peated among a civilized people of attempting to raise 
an altar to their God upon the ruins of the temple 
of science." 

But it has not been among Christians alone that 
this attempt has been made, for not only Socrates but 
Anaxagoras, was proscribed and banished, with his 
whole family, by the Athenians, for attempting to ex- 
plain the phenomena of the heavens by natural causes ! 

Pythagoras, in the beginning of the fifth century, 
in Italy, was obliged to confine his astronomical phi- 
losophy to a chosen few, fearing the ecclesiastical 
power, and leave the mass to rot in ignorance. He 
taught that the sun was the centre of the solar sys- 
tem, which if publicly announced would have caused 
his ruin in such an age of bigotry and mental dark- 
ness. 

Philolaus, a pupil of Pythagoras, a. d. 450, was 
obliged to fly from Italy for having publicly announced 
the doctrines of his preceptor in astronomy ! When 
Popery got the ascendancy in Italy, astronomy and all 
sciences which seemed to clash with the stories of your 
messengers, Doctor, were immersed in total darkness, 
until the time of the Preformation. 

You well know, my dear Doctor Chalmers, that 
Capernicus, (1500) who was the true discoverer of the 
solar system, dared not publish it until near his death, 



168 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

fearing the vengeance of the Popish rabble, including 
the ignorant priests. You know his book, entitled 
" Astronomic, Jnstravata, sive cle Revolutionibus Or* 
bium Celestium" 

The case of Galileo, you well know, who, for an- 
nouncing in Italy that the earth moved and that moons 
revolved round Jupiter. See the poor old greyheaded 
astronomer, on his knees, in presence of seven Cardi- 
nals, Inquisitors, compelling him to retract every 
thing he had written or said on the subject of as- 
tonomy, with all the arguments of nature staring them 
in the face ! Is this the truth of your messenger, 
Doctor, through which the intellect and liberty of a 
poor old man of science is lapped up in the wigs of 
seven bigots of Papish power ? 

Galileo was immersed in a prison for a year, and 
his books burned by the common hangman, a. d. 1736. 
But the writings of Celsus had the same fate from the 
earlier Christians, who destroyed every copy they could 
find of that accomplished writer, who, it appears from 
Origen and Lardner, was the most potent enemy of 
what he deemed to be " The Christian Superstition" 
If the Christian creed was a special revelation, what 
could Celsus or any other man do against it ? But 
those early bigots feared the power of truth. 

Had not King Charles the Second been educated in 
liberal sentiments, he would not have established, 
as he did, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, 
England, nor would the great leading philosophic doc- 
trine of Newton, " That all bodies attract each other, 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 169 

with a force directly proportioned to their quantity 
of matter, and inversely as the square of the dis- 
tance" ever have place in the science of astronomy, 
were it not for the age in which he lived. And even 
the theory of the tides, by La Place, would have 
'been condemned by the Holy Church of Home. Did 
ever such sentiments proceed from a God of truth ! 
Every effect follows its cause. 

My learned opponent will, no doubt, say that the 
abuses and errors of the Church of Rome are not to 
be laid at the door of Christianity. Who made Peter 
the head of the Popish Church? Was it not your 
messengers, Doctor ? But I have shown that they are 
poor authority for St. Peter's key. All things patrake of 
the nature of the source from which they spring, within 
the moral, religious or natural world. (Axiom 11.) If 
the tree is good the fruit will be. The effect follows 
the cause, and notwithstanding what 1 have said in re- 
gard to the testimony of living witnesses, yet the 
superlative requirements of the New Testament in re- 
gard to man's practice in the Christian religion, have 
laid the foundation and .actually caused much misery 
and cruelty in the world. They have also given rise to 
abbesies, monasteries and monkish recluses, penance 
self- affliction, and the whole train of superstitions* 

science ! raise your voice with all your might, 
And rouse our race from superstition's night. 

" True religion is ever open to inquiry, it is error 
alone that hastens to hide itself in darkness." 



170 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Luther was terribly abused by Pope and Popery , 
although on a different subject, I expect no better fate 
from sects of all denominations ; }*et I have the fullest 
faith in the Supreme Being, that truth and reason will 
triumph over bigotry, error and superstition. I dedi- 
cate this little work to the rising generation. Let 
them read and consider it, and my object will have 
been gained. 

So long as we pay men for keeping us in mental 
darkness, so long will intellectual night reign over 
mankind. A pure morality and a pure worship of 
the Supreme God are the sure roads to happiness. 
Man should never murmur at the dispensations of 
Providence, for God reigns and rules triumphant over 
this and all worlds in infinite space, in his One Act, 
in his Eternal Now. 

You know, Doctor, that the infamous sale of Popish 
indulgences brought about the Reformation of Luther 
in Germany, and gave to his followers the name of 
Protestants, but although Luther's reputation has es- 
caped, it has not been so with John Calvin. Calvin 
had a friend, Servetus, who joined him in his opposi- 
tion to the Roman See, but Servetus was so unfortu- 
nate as to communicate to his friend Calvin, in a pri- 
vate letter, his doubts in regard to the Trinity. But 
some time after, Servetus, arriving at Geneva, Switzer- 
land, the treacherous Calvin had him arrested, tried 
and burned at the stake ! Wonder if this monster re- 
former had any infant of his, " a span long" in hell ? 
Can you answer this question, Doctor Chalmers, as I 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. m 17. 

think you are a Calvanist ? Did not this burning at 
the stake of Servetus, as well as many like enormities, 
result from the faith placed in the testimony of your 
messengers ? You will, no doubt, say that " God or- 
dains whatever comes to pass." 1553, in the 44th 
year of his age. 

That men shall die by God's almighty will, - 
As in his hand he holds the power to kill, 
" That death's no evil as all men must die," 
And where. man goes, 'tis naught to you, or I. 
If flames invest him and his flesh consume, 
It is decreed, you'll say, it is his doom, 
So Calvin's safe, as in your creed you hold, 
He did his duty to his flock and fold ! 

Let it be recollected that this little work is but an 
epitome of what I have to write, and when I am 
roused to the work I shall have "a- whip for the 
horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's 
back." 

Our constitution here should rule our land, 

That no mean fanatic shall have command, 

For give them power, no matter what they say, 

Papist, Methodist, Protestant, they'll have their way, 

They'll use it as of old, for man's the same, 

And as to motive differs but in name. 

Let science flame and give the world its light, 

Then man shall move triumphant in his might. 

You will also recollect, my learned Doctor, that the 
inquisition, which was established in Spain about the 
year 1484, and in Portugal about 1537, and had been 



172 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

previously introduced into Lombardy by Pope Inno- 
cent IV., 1251, was nothing more than a naturae 
effect, resulting from the transcendental cause of supe- 
rior sanctity, offered to mankind by your messengers 
of the New Testament, and which had given the Pope 
such supreme power over men, nobles, kings and king- 
doms. This assumed apostolic exclusive power can- 
not stand long the advancement of literature and 
science in the world. 

Another natural result, Doctor, of the doctrine of 
your messengers in the establishment of Popery, may 
be found in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day in 
France, when 25,000 Protestant victims were mur- 
dered in cold blood by express order of the king, the 
Duke of Guise and Bishop of Paris aiding and abet- 
ting, 1572. The monster king cried out from his 
window, " kill ! kill !" The massacre lasted for five 
days, and among the slain were the noble Coligny and 
other distinguished Protestants. 

The Court of England, on this occasion, went into 
deep mourning, and received the visit of the French 
Minister in solemn silence, each member looking on 
the floor 

Now, my learned opponent, you can see that your 
great Bridgewater treatise on the external evidences 
of Christianity wholly fails, when the internal evi- 
dences are examined, and cause and effect shown. 

The power that the doctrine of the pardon of sins, 
shown by your messengers, has given to the popish 
clergy over their ignorant dupes, is so great that all the 



AND HEAVEN GAINED 173 

logic, facts and sound reasoning on earth cannot in- 
fluence them to disbelieve their divine appointment. 
Those priests in Ireland a.nd other countries have an 
absolute despotic power over their ignorant dupes, and 
they find it to their interest to keep their unfortunate 
people in a state of mental darkness and consequent 
superstition. These people think that one drop of 
holy water can purify a lake fifty miles in diameter ! 

I have seen a priest in Ireland horsewhip his con- 
gregation for stopping to hear a Methodist preacher 
harranging a congregation inside of a hedge 

The priestly power of those men over their dupes 
is such, that if 20,000 of them were in arms to gain 
their civil liberty, the command of one of these 
magic men, would make them throw down their arms 
and flee to the hills ! Witness Smith O'Brien's af- 
fair, for which he was transported. 

At a charity sermon for orphans, at which I was 
present, preached by a Rev. Mr. Harald, in Philadel- 
phia, about 32 years ago, he said in a most emphatic 
voice, raised to its highest pitch, " At the risk of your 
souls you must aid them." When the plates or boxes 
went round, such a shower of notes, and gold, and sil- 
ver, as went into them, I never before or since wit- 
nessed. It is true that Mr. Harald was an extremely 
eloquent preacher, but then his poiver appeared to be 
equal to that of a divinity. Here my learned friend, 
Doctor Chalmers, smiled, no doubt thinking of his 
overpowering eloquence in his Scotch dialect. Now, 
Doctor, if this transcendental system of Christianity, 



174 



HELL DEMOLISHED, 



announced by your messengers, had its origin in. the 
Almighty, why has it not covered the earth after a 
lapse of 1855 years? On the contrary, it is now on 
the wane, and looked on merely as a handsome copy- 
line set down by a teacher for the practice of boys. 

The fact is, my learned Doctor, that Christianity, 
as set forth by your messengers, became in after ages 
one of the greatest engines for the control of mankind, 
as individuals and nations, that had ever been on earth. 
Paganism itself, Judaism, or Mahometanism, bear no 
comparison to its influence for good in some cases, 
but for evil in most ; as under the dominion of the 
popes. Eational Christianity under Protestant sway, 
I must confess, united with the light of science, as it 
is, proves a manifest blessing to mankind. Indicating 
a pure morality, if nothing more, it is beautiful in it- 
self, and has its benign influence on its sincere votaries. 
But view it for a moment under the popes. 

" In the year 1517, John Tetzel, a Dominican friar, 
began in Germany, to publish indulgences, and to 
offer them for sale. He was employed by Albert, 
elector of Metz, and Archbishop of Magdeburg, and 
Albert himself was the immediate agent of Leo 10th, 
whose profuse munificence had exhausted the papal 
treasury, and induced him to replenish it by the most 
unjustifiable means. The indulgences in question, 
were plenary in the highest sense of the word ; for 
Tetzel proclaimed the complete omission of sins, 
whether past, present, or future, to all who would pay 
the stipulated sum. 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 175 

u He who had money, or who had interest enough to 
borrow it, might transgress with impunity every pre- 
cept of the Decalogue, and set the justice of heaven at 
defiance. 

" With an absolution already in his possession, no- 
thing but the punishment of the Civil Magistrate 
could restrain him from committing the most atrocious 
wickedness ; and by the usurpation of the Ecclesiasti- 
cal Courts, the number even of heinous crimes which 
fell within the jurisdiction of the Civil Magistrate, 
was exceedingly small . 

" The pope reigned triumphant; the prerogative of 
the Supreme Judge was violated and destroyed, and 
the thunderbolt of divine wrath snatched from the 
hand of Omnipotence ! All morality was relaxed, 
and all government weakened — and all subordination 
and obedience seemed likely to cease ; and the per- 
nicious tendency of the doctrine was surpassed by no- 
thing but the shameless impudence of Tetzel and his 
associates, who published the indulgences and magni- 
fied their value." This proceeding laid the founda- 
tion of the reformation of Martin Luther, and gave 
the name of Protestants to the world. St. Peter's 
church, at Rome, was built by a tax of one penny on 
every Catholic in Europe, called Peter Pense. 

Again, Doctor, we find another example of the con- 
sequence of the testimony of your messengers in the 
Inquisition. An institution known to be of the most 
frightful character, for the pretended good of souls, 
but in fact for the power of the Romish Church, or 



176 HELL DEMOLISHED, 

Holy Christian Catholic Church, and it is nonsen&e 
to say that those mere Popes, Cardinals, Bishops and 
Priests, did any more than any other set of men under 
similar circumstances, and possessing the same power, 
would have done and would still do if they had the 
secular as well as ecclesiastical power at their com- 
mand. " Give humility a coach and six." 

In France the Catholics murdered the Huguenots or 
French Protestants. In England the Catholics mur- 
dered and burned at the stake the Protestants, and in 
their turn the Protestants retaliated, when they had 
power, and murdered and burned at the stake the 
Catholics, and much of the same thing was practiced 
all over Europe. But what is- more surprisiag, after 
fleeing from Europe for religious liberty, the Presby- 
terians whipped the Greeks and immersed witches in 
the water, to try if they would perish, and if so, they 
concluded that they were no witches ! Who will ever 
forget the old Blue Laws of Connecticut, which, among 
other things, forbid a man to kiss his wife on Sunday. 

THE INQUISITION IN SPAIN. 

There was an inquisitor general in Spain, with 
other assistants, all dressed in mournful robes, with a 
fellow carrying a whip of torture in his hand, and 
dressed in a long robe of black linen, with a long 
cowl of the same color, drawn over his head and face, 
with small holes for his eyes, all of which is to strike 
terror to the miserable wretch who is always ushered 
into the inquisition from the bosom of his family, 



AND HFAVEN GAINED. 177 

without knowing the cause why ! This fellow within 
has the appearance, it is said, of the very devil, if any 
one ever saw that bugbear. 

I was about to conclude my argument with a de- 
scription of the frightful tortures of the Inquisition 
in Spain, to include the u auto defe" or burning at the 
stake ; all of which resulting from the doctrines of 
your messengers, on which Popery is founded, but 
they are too disgusting, terrific and painful to the 
feelings to give them place. If, then, Doctor Chal- 
mers, your messengers were inspired of God, the in- 
spiration has been applied to very bad purposes, but 
God never revealed to any man a falsehood, on any 
subject, human or divine. 

Now, my very learned Doctor, I think I shall show 
you that, in regard to the mental and physical liberty 
of mankind, it is of little importance, who it is that 
exercises sway over them, so long as church and state, 
so long as the ecclesiastical and civil power are united 
under the doctrines set forth by your messengers. 
The difference, as Dean Swift once said, is only that 
between " tweedle dum and tweedle dee." 

It is true, that those potentates, or kings, who have 
thrown off the assumed power and dictation of the 
popes, do not, like them, offer men the pardon of their 
sins, on confession, or offer indulgences, like Tetzel 
and Leo X, for sale, nor do they attempt, like the 
popes, to dethrone kings, or issue anathemas against 
those who disobey them. They don't bring neighbor- 
ing kings to crouch at their feet like the red dragon of 



178 

popery, but then they tax the people who never attend 
their churches, at least one-tenth of their property, for 
the support of idle bishops, deans and priests. Here 
follow some of their salaries or incomes in England. 

Arch Bishop of Canterbury, £75,000, $375,000 per 
annum ! 

Arch Bishop of York, from $50,000 to $95,000 per 
annum. 

Bishop of Bath and Wells, from $25,000 to $40,- 
000 per annum. 

Bishop of Carlisle, from $22,000 to $25,000 per 
annum. 

Bishop of Durham, from $40,000 to $193,000 per 
annum. 

The salaries or incomes of the other 26 English, 
Irish, and Colonial Bishops, are not given in the 
peerage, but they are no doubt in proportion. 

Who told the story about St. Peter as the head of 
the Christian Church ? Was it not your messengers, 
Dr. Chalmers ? Here, then, are the fruits of their doc- 
trines. But let us follow King Henry the Eighth for 
a short distance. After becoming the defender of the 
Catholic faith, he wheels right about and cuts off one 
of the pope's heads, which he placed on his own 
shoulders, and then bid defiance to apostolic au- 
thority. He then suppressed all the religious houses 
in England, confiscating their whole estates, real and 
personal, and brought the avails into the national 
treasury. And all those bishops and clergy who did 
not conform to the new state of things, were prose- 



AND HEAVEN GAINED. 179 

cuted and driven from England. These recusants 
were, on nonconformity, to be hung if they ever pre- 
sumed to return to England. Here there was but 
another vision of his holiness the pope. 

Henry, though a greater tyrant than the inquisition 
itself, with his followers took the most effectual methods 
to suppress, and did suppress popery in England. 
But he united church and state, and cared not a far- 
thing for your messengers. Each of the other nations 
which has lopped off some member of the pope has 
scarcely left the successor of the fisherman a leg to 
stand upon, and it is likely, before long, he will be 
wholly dismembered. He had once seven heads and 
ten horns, but his heads have been lopped off one by 
one, so that at present he has but one head to fit his 
tiara, and as to the few horns he has left, they have 
ceased to grow any longer. 

When the ecclesiastical and civil powers are united, 
despotism must prevail, from the doctrines of your 
messengers, for man is the same tyrannical being now 
that he was in former ages. Here, then, Doctor, is 
cause and effect growing out of the absurd stories told 
of the Saviour, by the writers of the New Testimony, 
who are your messengers, as they assent, from G-od to 
man, and for which Christ is not at all responsible. 

Doctor Chalmers having been already heard on the 
other side, the decision of the court will be given by 
the Supreme Judge, at the next special term. 

Note. — This little work must be read with close thought, 
wholly through, to fully understand the author's design. It 
will not do to take it in detached parts, but as a whole. 



180 EDUCATION, 



EDUCATION. 



some say that extensive learning disqualifies men in 
most cases for the common concerns of life, and where 
it does not, nearly all acquired in the academy or col- 
lege is forgotten for want of use when men get into 
the business of the busy world. For instance, the 
Latin and Greek languages are of but little use to the 
great mass of the people so long as there are so many 
classical authors in their vernacular tongue. These 
languages, at this time of the world, are not worth, in 
general, the time consumed in their acquisition, for not 
one in ten, scarce in a hundred, get such a knowledge 
of them as is worth possessing ; and a little and im- 
perfect learning is a dangerous thing. In most cases 
they only render boys and men radically pedantic, by 
so often using Latin and Greek phrases, which they 
themselves cannot translate. 

To those who may become authors on scientific and 
other subjects, as well as those designed for the learned 
professions, these languages may become essential, but 
to no others. An acquaintance with French and 
Spanish, and perhaps German, may be deemed worth 
the time consumed in their acquisition. An acquaint- 
ance, too, with Algebra and Geometry, and Chemistry, 
may assist the merchant, the farmer and the mechanic 
in many matters connected with their business. But 
of what use is navigation to the ploughman ? or civil 
architecture to the cow-herd, the shepherd or to the 



EDUCATION. 181 

sailor ? But as the great body of society are not 
generally acquainted with what they may learn, we 
shall here give a list of most of the branches of learn- 
ing valued among men, so that parents and their chil- 
dren may select any one or more of them for acquisi- 
tion as may suit their tastes or circumstances, with 
- such remarks as each may seem to require. 

The following is an outline of a liberal education, 
exclusive of the languages. 

ELEMENTARY BRANCHES IN COMMON SCHOOLS. 

1. Orthography, or the art of spelling, which re- 
quires great care. 

2. Reading, paying strict regard to a correct style. 

3. Writing, without nourishing or long heads and 
tails to the letters, a neat hand. 

4. English Grammar and Composition. By a 
qualified teacher. 

5. Epistolary Correspondence, acquired best by 
copying elegant letters. 

6. Elocution, to be taught by a qualified master of 
the subject. 

7. Arithmetic, Vulgar and Decimal. 

8. Algebra, as far at least as Simple Equations. 

9. The Elements of Geometry, to be taught by a 
master who can follow the inductive process from one 
proposition to another, through at least the first six 
books of Euclid. 

10. Geography, ancient and modern, with the use 
of globes and maps. 



182 EDUCATION. 

11. History, ancient and modern, of cities, pro- 
vinces, kingdoms, states and empires, to include Bio- 
graphy, which is personal history. 

12. Ecclesiastical History, which relates to religion 
and its different sects. 

As the globe on which we live contains air, water 
and earth, its history should be studied in the follow- 
ing order : 

1. The History of the Atmosphere, which is callecl 
Meteorology. 

2. The History, or description of the Water, which 
is called Hydrography. 

3. The History of the crust of the Earth, or rather 
what it contains, which is called Mineralogy. 

4. Geology, which explains the strata or formations 
of the crust of the earth, as far as it has been ex- 
plored. 

These comprehend the inorganic history of the 
earth. 

THE ORGANIC HISTORY EMBRACES \ 

1. Botany, which is the natural history of plants. 

2. Horticulture, or the practical reproduction and 
cultivation of plants. 

3. Zoology, or the natural history of living animals. 

4. Ornithology, or the natural history of birds. 

5. Entomology, or the natural history of insee 

6. The history of reptiles. 

7. Ichthyology, or the history of fishes. 

But the study of these subjects are pursued but by 



EDUCATION. 183 

uniting it with examinations of museums, menageries, 
herbariums, botanic gardens, and cabinets of minerals. 
The above subjects, with their subdivisions, will 
give all that is worth knowing in Natural History. 
But it must be recollected that — 

1. History gives the bare knowledge of facts. 

2. Mathematics teaches the knowledge of the quan- 
tity, or measure of bodies or things. 

3. Philosophy teaches the reasons of things, and is 
of three kinds, viz : 

1. Intellectual Philosophy, or the philosophy of the 
human mind, which comprehends Logic and Meta- 
physics. 

2. Moral Philosophy, or Ethics, comprehending the 
laws of nature and nations, with politics. 

3. Natural Philosophy, or Physics, animate and 
inanimate. 

These three, with their various subdivisions, em- 
brace the whole of philosophy. 

NATURAL. PHILOSOPHY. 

Under this head the following subjects are to be 
studied : 

1. Pure Mechanics : this, with the two following, 
requires an acquaintance with Algebra and Geometry 
to study them with success. 2. Astronomy. 3. Op- 
tics, or the laws of vision. 4. Electricity. 5. Gal- 
vanism. 6. Magnetism. 7. Acoustics, or the laws 
of sound. 8. Pneumatics. 9. Hydrodynamics, em- 



*^4 EDUCATION. 

bracing Hydraulics. 10. Dynamics, or the laws of 
motion, and 11. Meteorology, which has been before 
named. 

Every student should keep a note-book for entering 
such matters as he may deem worth remembering for 
future use. 

MATHEMATICS. 

Mathematics are of two kinds, mixed and pure. 
The mixed branches are those matters in which pure 
mathematics are blended, and are of a practical nature. 
They are as follows : 

1. Book-keeping, the art or science of keeping ac- 
counts, or books of commerce. 

2. Mensuration of superfices and solids. 

3. Surveying, land and coast surveying. 

4. Navigation and lunar observations. 

5. The art of Dialing or constructing sun dials. 

6. The art of Gauging or the measurement of 
liquors. 

7. The art of gunnery, > They belong to the 

8. The art of Fortification. \ military profession. 

9. Horalogy, or the art of clock and watch making 

10. Civil Architecture, the art of erecting houses or 
public buildings. 

11. Naval Architecture, the art of ship building. 

_ 12. Optics, which explains the manner in which 
vision is performed in the eye. 

It also includes dioptics, catoptrics and perspective. 



EDUCATION. 185 

PURE MATHEMATICS 

Are comprehended under the following heads: 

1. Arithmetic, 13. Imaginary quantities, 

2. Algebra, 14. Interpolations, 

3. Geometry, 15. Locus, 

^ Trigonometry, plane > .- Isoperimetrical ) 

and spherical, ) ' problems, ) 

5. Logarithms, 17. Notation, 

6. Conic Sections, 18. Numbers, 

7. Fluxions, 19. Porisms, 

8. Analysis, 20. Series, 

9. Arithmetic of Lines, 21. Transcendents. 

10. Curves, 22. Variations, 

11. Chances, ~o Principia of Newton, 

12. Functions, sui generis. 

Now, this list will show what very little prospect as 
well as very little use there is in giving every man in 
the nation a liberal education, for there are few pro- 
fessors in any college in the country conversant with 
the whole. Of the above list, Arithmetic, Algebra, 
Geometry, and Plane Trigonometry, will be sufficient 
for the wants of most men. 

The national and State Legislators should have two 
great objects in view as regards education. First, 
the instruction of every individual in the nation or 
State in all the branches of a good English Common 
School education ; and secondly, the instruction of 
those in all the higher branches of learning, shown in 
the common schools to possess a high degree of natu- 
ral talent, to enable them to supply the army, navy, 
the learned professions, and all the arts of civil life. 



1 86 EDUCATION. 

Genius and talent, wherever found, should be se- 
lected for the acquisition of the higher branches of 
knowledge. For in a republican government, although 
all men should be on an equality as regards their civil, 
political and religious rights, yet there is no such 
thing as an equality among men in the gifts of nature. 
Give boys, then, from the foundation, a chance to 
show to their countrymen and the world what this 
country and the God of nature ha^e enabled them to 
accomplish. Native genius and energy of character 
have often overcome poverty and all other obstacles 
in their way, and arrived at the highest honors, in all 
countries and in all ages. There is an old and true 
adage which says that " Genius without learning makes 
a madman, while learning without genius makes a 
blockhead." But still no boy should be discouraged, 
for application often does more than genius. The in- 
tellects of boys, too, do not mature or open at the 
same age in all ; some that appear quite dumb and 
obtuse as school-boys, often, by application, make the 
brightest men, and more frequently the best and most 
useful citizens. But the government being themselves 
but a part of oar people, it becomes their duty to 
look to the instruction of all for the good of all, and 
for the national honor. Some have said that money 
is power. But we say that u knowledge is power " 
for what can money effect without the proper know- 
ledge how to use it ? To conclude — Give to youth 
the opportunity of enlarged inquiry and general learn- 
ing, and keep as much as possible from them the 



EDUCATION. 187 

baneful influence of bigoted superstitions, ignorant 
priests of all denominations, and you will establish 
true liberty of mind and body on earth. 

THE LATIN CLASSIC WRITERS. 

When great Achilles, at the siege of Troy, 
Slew Priam's son, as round the walls he ran, 

For Hector was his father's only joy, 
He struggled, fought and bled a noble man. 

Achilles was a butcher, all allow, 
Of human blood he made his many meals. 

Ajax, another, made a solemn vow 

To conquer Troy, and many Trogens kills. 

He gluts in Priam's blood, that now must flow, 
So Troy was sack'd for Helen's venal crime ; 

Her lover, Paris, too, must die to show 

That Greeks would conquer, though it cost much time. 

Romulus and Remus, then unknown to fame, 
Made their sad way to Tibers' fruitful shore, 

Located there and fix'd that magic name 
Sacred to fame for evermore. 

Sol and Luna shining bright, 

Moved in silence round, 
Illuming day, illuming night, 

To Romans most profound. 

* The milky way resplendent shone, 
Inspiring all with hope, 
And each was happy in his home. 
Until they made a pope. 

But long before the pope was made, 
Fair science spread her wings 



188 EDUCATION. 

Through fair Italia's rural glade. 
Near fountains, rivers, springs. 

The villas rose in beauty bright, 

Adorning every glen, 
Where genius sat both day and night 

To exercise the pen. 

I'll simply name some authors here, 

Who, in that golden age, 
Of great Augustus without fear, 

Embellished many a page. 

Latin classical writers, named for the information 
of those not possessing the advantages of a classical 
education : — Cicero, Livy, Csesar, Sallust, Virgil, 
Horace, Terence, Plautus, Juvenal, Ovid, Phiny, 
Tacitus, Varisus, Paterculus. 

Note. — The Latin is but the Molic Dialect of the Greek. 



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